19 APRIL 1946, Page 16

A CRITICISM SIR,—Shortly after I had read the sparkling prose

in which Mr. Burnell exposed your own cart-horse-like action, these lines came to me: There once was of prose a cultured amator, Who for lively examples did scan The Spectator,

But so dull were its pages—

He succumbed to his rages And died The Spectator's rectator.

I was about to throw them away when I noticed how well they fulfilled Mr. Burnell's definition of W. J. Turner's "poetry." They are "cer- tainly not poetry . . . make no sense . . . invite no thought." As such it occurred to me that they would find their natural repository in your " intelligence-insulting" columns rather than in my waste-paper basket.