21 AUGUST 1926, Page 14

• BYRON, WALLER AND AESOP

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

Mr. H. C. Minchin's article in the Spectator of August 14th, on "Literary Coincidences," it is assumed that Byron, consciously or unconsciously, appropriated from Waller the simile of the eagle that received its death-wound from an arrow feathered with its own plumage. Is it not probable that both authors derived the idea from the (as I had supposed) well- known fable of Aesop, "The Eagle and the Arrow" ?—I am,