27 APRIL 1944, Page 14

ADVICE TO FARMERS

SIR,—Other members of the Virgil Society may like to know that the poet's advice to farmers: Frigidus agricolam si quando continet imber . .

Nunc facilis rubea texatur fiscina virga is not forgotten today by his fellow-countrymen. For a boy from this school, now working as an apprentice on a Midland farm, wrote recently: "The Italians that work on this farm are teaching me how to make baskets." Or perhaps one should rather see in his words an inverted fulfilment of Horace's claim that

Graecia capta forum victorem cepit et arses Intulit agresti Latio.

—Yours faithfully, R. W. HOWARD.

Liverpool College, Queens Drive, Liverpool, a.