" THAN WHOM."
[TO THE Rorrolt OV THE "EPROTATOlt."] Sin,—At a breakfast with Mr. Gladstone in the "sixties" I was so fortunate as to sit near a great writer—one of the very few great writers of that time who are still living—and I asked him what he thought of Cobbett's objection to the expression "than whom." He answered that the authority of good writers was in favour of that expression, and that, on abstract grounds, it was not more indefensible than the French C'est moi. It is plain, however, that such reasoning from authority may be carried too far; it is often used to sanction that odious solecism, " our mutual friend." It mast be quite forty years since I read Professor Conington's translation of the Aeneid into verse, and a septuagenarian memory is not always trustworthy, but my strong impression is that in that volume the Professor, referring doubtless to an archer, rhymes " than who " with " drew," and that, though I strongly objected to his octosyllabic rendering of Virgil, the unwonted phrase—I had almost said the iiirae herlisevov- did not grate on my ear. Yet I agree with your correspondent that the safe course is to avoid both the unfamiliar " than who " and the ungrammatical " than whom."—I am, Sir, &c., LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
Atheneum Club, Pall Mall, S.W. •
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