15 AUGUST 1958, Page 18

TAPER SIR,—Isn't Taper confusing Chapman with Tenny- son? 'And the

Pier and Harbour Order (Sheerness) Confirmation Bill.' I can scarcely believe that that is not one of the modern abuses so cantankerously attacked in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. Always supposing that Professor Auden does not put in a clairn—Yours faithfully, J. C. MAXWELL King's College, University of Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne, I [Taper writes : `No, I am not. The Pier and Har- bour Order (Sheerness) Confirmation Bill (pronounce it trippingly upon the tongue), is a perfect fourteener, the metre in which Chapman's Homer is written. I can't help the contents; in fact I don't know what they are.'—Editor, Spectator.]