"ME " AND "I"
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. Harper puts a question to me in the Spectator of May 24th ; perhaps, therefore, you will admit my answer. He asks, " In It's me,' would Mr. Kempe suggest a governing- subauclitum ?" Certainly not. I think that Mr. Harper, in his previous letter, has vindicated the idiomatic right of " It's me" to override syntax. " C'est moi" rests upon the same title. But it was to the Latin " me," not the English, that I referred, and for that I believe that a governing verb, ex- pressed or understood, is indispensable. If examples of the Latin "me," used as in the English and French which I have quoted, could be found anywhere, it would be in Plautus or Terence. Can Mr. Harper produce any such example from those, or any other Latin writers P Until he does so, I must still maintain that the " Me, me " of Nisus could be justified' in the eyes of a Quintilian only by " a governing subauditum,". or by some such completion of the sentence as we have in the " in me convertite ferrum." The experiment by which Mr: Harper asks me to try my opinion, is applicable to English only, which I was not at all considering in what I said about the ellipse in question.—I am, Sir, &c., St. James's Rectory, Piccadilly. J. E. KEMPE.
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