[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sirt,—You touch upon a
universal experience in your article on this subject in the Spectator of the 2nd inst. The following illustration may be found interesting as exhibiting the matter in an extreme, all but incredible, light, perhaps. Yet the story was related to me in good faith, and it serves to show how the critical faculty, even in its most elementary out- goings, may be held so completely in abeyance that a mere sound, "signifying nothing," passes unchallenged because of the liberal currency given to it for many years in the past.
In an Edinburgh drawing-room, an octogenarian—known wherever the English language is spoken—was, in his hilarious way, humming to himself Moore's Irish melody, "The Young May Moon is Beaming Love," when all at once he stopped, and said to a friend of the writer's : "Memoort!' what's a Memoon 'P I never thought of asking the question before."
—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN HOGBEN.
Joppa, Ikfidlothian, June 5th.
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