Sir,—If you do not immediately suppress the person who takes it upon himself to lay down the law almost every day in your columns on the subject of literary composition, I will give up taking The Chronicle. The man is a pedant, an ignoramus, an idiot, a self-advertising duffer. A little while ago, when somebody pointed out to him a case of the misuse of “and which,” the creature, utterly missing the point, rushed about denouncing every sentence containing “and which” until some public-spirited subscriber of yours stopped him by a curt exposure which would have shamed any corrigible human being into humble silence for at least a month. Yet he has already broken out in a fresh place. Mr. Andrew Lang, moved by a personal antipathy to “split infinitives” and to sentences ending with the word “such” (for example, Shakespeare’s line, “No glory lives behind the back of such”) once made a jocular attempt to bounce the public out of using them by declaring that they were bad English. Of course, all competent literary workmen laughed at Mr. Lang’s little trick; but your fatuous specialist, driven out of his “and which” stronghold, is now beginning to rebuke “second-rate newspapers” for using such phrases as “to suddenly go” and “to boldly say.” I ask you, Sir, to put this man out. Give the porter orders to use such violence as may be necessary if he attempts to return, without, however, interfering with his perfect freedom of choice between “to suddenly go,” “to go suddenly,” and “suddenly to go.”

If Michael Angelo were now alive I have not the slightest doubt that he would have his letterbox filled with proposals from the great film firms to consecrate his powers to the delineation of Felix the Cat instead of painting the Sistine Chapel; but I think you will agree with me that his duty would lie in the direction of frescoe and sculpture rather than of Los Angeles.