BRICK BATS FOR JOHN DOE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 16895, 17 November 1920, Page 3

BRICK BATS FOR JOHN DOE.

KS THE EDITOB. 1 ' Sir, —I was pleased to see in your Monday’s issue a letter pointing out some of the "errors of John Doe” perpetrated in the. Saturday edition; Your correspondent, however, has omitted one, obvious' gramthatical mistake, - a • ; mistake which would not he tolerated even in a primary school child, namely, the second person used; after, “one’ll”. John Doe’s words are * . . . "pronounced in such a way as to pain one’s ear if you arh at all careful and ■ sensitive in speech.” Truly an example of careful diction 1 Yet this man sets himself ' tip as "castigator V censorqtie / minorum” (Horace). Doubtless wnile V laying down- the’law for tethers he recognises none, not: even tKat of grammar, for himself .But, grammar apart, there are serious mistakes of matter. ■ Deferring ,to . Cleopatra ho. writes—“There'whs one heart she,; could, not subdue, ‘that dull cold-blooded .Caesar. ’ but another .story-is that Caesar‘and Cleopatra had.ason Caesarion.” John , Doe erroneously supposes that the ‘coldblooded Caesar’ was the great Julius. Nothing of the kind. The reference was to Octavianus Caesar, his grandnephew (afterwards known as Augustus) who, after his defeat of Antony, obdurately’resisted Cleopatra*? seductions. Julius Caesar, on the contrary, . i spent six rnonths with Cleopatra after the Alexandrine' war end had a son by her, Caesarfon, who was recognised'as legitimate by Antony. This is not "another story” but an established fact. (See any book of Roman history.) Thus does. John Doe, with lamentable ignorance of history and literature, .ecuftiso ' j tho two Caesars and events which hap- ; pened at an interval of 17 years. Yet another mistake: He quotes ‘old forgotten far off things,” whereas the.text of Matthew Arnold and of Palgravo gives “unhappy fax off things.” a reading which is confirmeddiy euphony and by common- sense. Without doubt other mistakes quite as serious couldi u'* r adduced-from his- ‘‘Refleciipns/’jbnt I t am not in a position to do so, as J have ever confined my reading- to- what is instructive or entertaining.—l am, etc,,, IGNORANT SCHOOLBOY.