A PROOF-READER'S LETTER [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—To criticize a critic who is not only a proof-reader but the son of a proof-reader is a risky thing to do ; and I would not attempt to do it were he not one of the Spectator's " far-flung " readers, dwelling in a far-off Antipodean land where (or perhaps I should say " in which ") Christmas Day is a midsummer festival. But, even in those expansive latitudes, scholarship, it seems, can get mixed up with pedantry, and the critics can forget what a certain wise man, , whose name I forget, once—or perhaps more than once— remarked about Lindley Murray : he said that his familiarity . with that great grammarian was so perfect that he knew • exactly when - and where he might treat him with studied contempt.
I submit that. Mr. Philip Townshend, of Natal, carries his _reverence for grammar too far when he. cavils at the Spectator's me. of - where " for ", in which "—at any rate, in the passage which he quotes from your columns of June 19th, 1926. , Thousands. of. constructions. similar to -that of which he complains might be drawn from the great masters of prose style ; and, although poetry takes a licence all its own, few . cultured Englishmen who have settled far from home would wish to alter Hood's- little poem beginning .." I remember, I remember The room where I was born, The little window where the sun Caine peeping in at morn."
89 Mortimer. Ken-sal Rise, N.W. 10.
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