* * A well-intentioned little comment that misfires and has
to be laboriously explained is a poor pitiable thing. One such of my own, better left dead and sepulchred, must, it seems, be resurrected to dispel misunderstanding. In the recent House of Lords debate on the air programme Lord Londonderry, it may be remembered, rounded off his speech with the classic passage from " Areopagitica " on a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep. The next day a London paper, apparently thinking this rather a notable piece of oratory on the part of the Air Minister,- picked out the passage and displayed it under the heading " I See Her As An Eagle," " Lord Londonderry's Peroration in the House of Lords," whereupon I ventured to observe that I thought a man called Milton said something like this before. Now it appears that at least one reader—and ex into disce if not manes at any rate perhaps mulles- supposed I was charging Lord Londonderry with having passed off Milton as his own, before their Lordships' unlettered and unsuspecting House. I may be capable of many follies, but this particular one is unimaginable. Let me affirm in the simplest words I can command that I concluded that the paper in question supposed the Miltonic periods to be Lord Londonderry's own. That, just that, is what there was to it.
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