28 JANUARY 1949, Page 20

WHICH 'PITT ?

SIR,—The reply to Mr. David Savory's question is " William Pitt the Elder in 1741 " as in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. But the O.D.Q. should have quoted from the D.N.B.: "In the account of the debate, furnished by Dr. Johnson to the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1741 (p. 569), Pitt is made to deliver the celebrated retort to Horace Walpole the elder. Pitt pos- sibly said something of the kind on this occasion, but the phrasing of the retort was clearly Johnson's."

—Yours faithfully, Oxford University Press; Amen House, Warwick Square, E.C.4.