Notes & Asides.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: My mother died last year at the age of 76. In her papers I found her longhand copy of a poem that caught her schoolgirl fancy sometime (I estimate) in the late 1930s.

She attributes it to the Queen's University (Belfast) student rag Pro Tanto Quid, but doesn't provide the name of the author.

I thought you might enjoy it.

The Grammarian's Funeral

The Grammarian said,

"I'm ill because

(To introduce an adverb clause)

The first pers. sing. is very weak,

My active voice can hardly speak,

For though I've not yet run my race,

I'm wounded (in the dative case).

A vital spot, I shall not live,

I've got a split infinitive."

And so he died, departed hence,

That is to say, he changed his tense.

Where he has gone, may we find out?

(Subjunctive mood, expressing doubt.)

They buried him at half-past eight

(Extension of the predicate),

And on his tombstone wrote this line:

Noun prop., third pers. sing., masculine.

Sincerely yours,

Antony F. P. Vickery

Lansdale, Pa.

--Dear Mr. Vickery: Great fun!

Thanks, WFB 

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: Horrors! Tell me that I'm wrong. Tell me I have erroneously diagnosed a case of verb-subject (dis)agreement.

In the June 2 issue, your column, "Great Words from W.," contains this sentence: "The challenge to conventional moral criteria by which the just war is defined are distinct."

But your "are" should have been "is," which should not lead us to wonder "what the meaning of is is."

Faithfully,

James T. Lee, M.D.

Saint Paul, Minn.

--Doc, nicely turned. The sentence is of course wrong.

It should have read: "The challenge to conventional moral criteria by which the just war is defined is distinct." Criteria is plural, challenge, singular.

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Bill: My letter to the editor (NR, July 14) about the alleged influence of Ping Ferry on the Ford Foundation was not published in full.

I called attention not only to my own scholarly book on the Fund for the Republic, but also to two important and more contemporary accounts written by insiders who knew Ferry and Robert M. Hutchins even better than I did.

I'm referring to Frank K. Kelly's Court of Reason: Robert Hutchins and the Fund for the Republic (Free Press, 1981) and Harry S. Ashmore's Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Little Brown, 1989).

They are more valuable, in my judgment, than the recent biography Ferrytale, co-authored by ardent leftist Victor Navasky, which exaggerates Ferry's impact on the Ford Foundation and almost everything else.

Thomas Reeves

Franksville, Wis.

--Dear Tom: Thanks for the elucidation. And I look forward to your next book, whenever it comes in.

Cordially, Bill

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: I occasionally read National Review Online, your column included, and I want to congratulate you.

Most CEOs, publishers, etc., give lip service to the bromide, "hire people who are smarter than you," but you seem to take it very seriously.

Sincerely,

Dan R. Friedman

Forest Hills, N.Y.

--Dear Mr. Friedman: Oh I do, and you are smart to recognize this.

Cordially,

-WFB