24 JANUARY 1969, Page 26

Table talk

Sir: In 'Table talk' (10 January) Sir Denis Brogan ascribes the saying, 'We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest of us,' to a Master of Trinity, one Thompson, living in the mid-nineteenth century.

Surely it was Henry Montague Butler (1833- 1918), sometime headmaster of Harrow, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1886 until his death, who coined this most ap- posite mot. Sir Denis did indeed quote this say- ing in a previous `Table talk' and ascribed it to its author. I detected a note of doubt in his article; and I hope he will forbear if I say he was correct in the first instance, but that his memory failed him in the second. The exception proves the rule: 'We are none of us infallible, not even the eldest of us.'