MR. MAYHEW’S SECOND LETTER. 
50ff 
received something better in return than the “ meanness of abuse 
and the grossness of personality/’ of which his second letter is 
composed. 
This second letter is indeed an amusing document. By bandy- 
ing bluster, bombast, and Billingsgate, its author avoids not only 
discussion of the question to which I have invited him, but even 
abstains from allusion thereto. His plan of tactics forcibly reminds 
me of the “ red herring” artifice, which consists in tying the her- 
ring in a string, and dragging it in various directions across the 
track of game, in order to direct pursuers from the real object of 
chase. 
In one who sets himself up for a discoverer in science, and finds 
he is treating as “ something new” what was considered “ com- 
mon place” a hundred years ago, and who undertakes to criticise 
the language of others while unable to express himself correctly, 
I admit there is abundant cause for self reproach, and probably 
some excuse for using a “ red herring,” in order to elude those who 
are unwilling he should run away with a credit not his own. The 
self-recrimination of such an one may so far embitter his temper 
as to induce him to indulge in the “ grossness of personality” against 
those who tell him unpalatable truth ; still, in so yielding to the 
temptation which besets him, in so resorting to the “ red herring,” 
he makes use of an expedient which merely amuses your readers 
and myself, and will not serve as a defence for him, who seems un- 
able to employ another. When such a person as this accuses me of 
want of candour ; when the language of him who charges me with 
incivility is defiled by “ vulgarity” in every page ; when a father, 
a CHIRON in the profession, deals with a “ weak-minded young 
man” by condescending to the “ meanness of abuse,” it is all a 
“ red herring.” His objection, that I should “ introduce into contro- 
versy the name of any person who may be alive” — his evasion of 
the charge, which I re-assert, that he garbled my language — his 
charge of inconsistency against me, because I could not understand 
two contradictor}'' sentences — his supposition that I know nothing 
of him because living “ hundreds of miles distant” — is but a “ red 
herring.” 
I cannot conceive it my blame if Mr. Mayhew proves deficient 
in those branches of knowledge wherein he most prides himself. 
It is, surely, fair to expect correctness of expression in one who 
complains of want of accuracy and perspicuity in others. “ To be” 
and “ not to be” are very different conditions, which, although 
his “ governess” may have omitted to notice, Mr. Mayhew will 
find clearly distinguished in the “Elements of English Grammar.” 
But when a teacher and a discoverer in science describes the “ com- 
mon place” matter of the past century as “ something new,” and 
