5 FEBRUARY 1972, Page 19

PS. This evening, following the dispatch of my letter I

re-read Peter Watson-Smyth's original article and came across a passage that I had completely forgotten. It would seem that his knowledge of Gray confirms my point, which was based on mere deduction, for he has written with reference to the ninth stanza: "Gray, though a plagiarist in the Elegy, was too honest to be a conscious one; West, therefore, must have been dead a long time for his lines to have slipped into Gray's subconscious to be revived again as his own."

Mr Hardy's revelation, it would seem, has achieved the opposite of his -intention. He has, I submit, unwittingly driven a nail in the coffin of the theory that the Elegy was written on Sunday, August 28, 1737.

R.L.R.