12 APRIL 1957, Page 17

SIR, —'It is tempting to say that nobody in full possession

of his faculties' could class Chaucer with Gower, or Sir Gawain with Havelock, and I should be interested to meet an English don who so con- fused his 'certificates of merit.' Such a man would be equally capable, one supposes, of applying Aristotelian canons to Beowulf. Where was this 'ring' of deluded dons when I was toiling through the- potty little syllabus that was made to look so hard? —Yours faithfully,

MARY HOLTBY 12 Moreton Road, Oxford