20 JANUARY 1979, Page 18

Latin lapse

Sir: 0 tempora! as Auberon Waugh might say. Not the least depressing aspect of our contemporary decline is that we now seem to be confronted with the first generation of reaCtionaries since the Renaissance who can't scan Latin hexameters. There is absolutely no reason why Waugh should know that mutant in the active voice is a transitive verb, and should therefore read mutantur, or why he should fail to recognise a hexameter when he found one lying around in the boxroom of his mind. But it he doesn't know Latin, why does he have to drag it in? Godfrey Hodgson London Weekend Television London SE1