To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I read with interest your profile on Professor John Finley, and as one whom Mr. Reed (Eliot House, '69) consulted, I would like to correct a quotation which I myself gave him. As it appears in your Profile, Mr. Finley described a thesis as "the length and shadow of a temperament." What he in fact said was "the lengthened shadow of a temperament," a line which typifies hand-homely his well-known understanding of student efforts, besides being an extraordinarily elegant example of iambic pentameter.

There are numberless other inaccuracies in Mr. Reed's Profile, a few of which are the reference to Mr. Finley's white hair (which retains its usual youthful color), the diminished attendance in Humanities 2 (simply false), and the ungrammatical Latin attributed with great unlikelihood to a former student of Norden and Wilamowitz (I pass over the vulgar reply). These allegations need no refutation, but they do seem inappropriate in the year when Eliot House, as now a nationwide community, is celebrating Professor Finley's 25th anniversary as Master.

I hope that Mr. Reed will, when he next speaks of Mr. Finley, recall the benefits of a Master who knows, and cares for, every entrant's name. Cedric H. Whitman   Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature