22 NOVEMBER 1969, Page 29

A serious ting

Sir: In his review (15 November) of David Williams's Too Quick Despairer, Martin Seymour-Smith says that 'Clough, under the strict tutelage of Matthew Arnold's father ... echoing the Doctor's own words, had as a schoolboy told his younger brother Georgy: "Fear not them that kill the body and after that have no more they can do, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell".'

In justice to Arnold of Rugby, it should be said that he was not the fans et origo of his alarming injunction. He, too, was echoing'—in this case the words of Jesus, s reported in Luke xii 4-5.