TAKAKA.

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1216, 3 September 1869, Page 3

TAKAKA.

To Hie Editor of The Colonist.

" Rules for good verse, in vain they do indite, •"' Then show us what is bad, by what they write." Congeevb.

Sir, —I solicit the favor of your indulgence by granting me a little space in your columns, to reply to some lines, which appeared in the Evening Mail of the 18 th instant, written in miserable diction, and wretched Scottish provincialism by a " Local Burns." Shade of Bobbie! but we are told that poets are born, not made: —

" Poeta nascitur, non fit."

Yes, this poetical effusion, in doggerel stanzas, has, in the most unblushing and most unwarrantable manner, tampered with and maligned the good name of several worthy settlers in the TaUaka, by denouncing, through the medium of the public prints, as a low, rowdy, yelling, lying, drunken community, thus Blabbing them, figuratively, in the dark, because they may be, in cases, somewhat dissentious to his own capricious whims and vagaries. But, Sii, —

" These toys do oft to serious mischief fall," and what is fun to the boys, is death to the frogs. As a maxim, it is at all times policy to be cautious and circumspect, when recipients of public emoluments, not to speak ill of others lest they should hear of their own misdeeds, for residents in glass houses should not throw stones, nor should they be anxious to indulge in the Jictious without first wearing the face of truth.\

I am, &c, George Taxcor*

Jesmond Farm, Takaka, August 24t,h> 1369,