NATIVE BARDS AND SMART REVIEWERS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 6, Issue 313, 14 December 1883, Page 3

NATIVE BARDS AND SMART REVIEWERS.

TO THE BDITOB. Sib,— My review of the poems of Mr D. Ferguson appears, to have stirred the bile of your monocular contributor Cyclop. That individual is at rare intervals funny, and; prosy, ■' but I m«§t do him the justice to say that it is seldom he dips hi 9 pen in gall. In his references to my review to which I am about to refer , he has, probably from dearth of matter, allowed his pen to run away with him, having had. some difficulty in filling his Stipulated space. I will take his objections seriatim. First: Are the lines quoted by me true to nature ? It is very evident that Cyclop has never spent a night at a farmhouse. If he were to do so in the spring ueasori, he would not require to be told that ploughirg is always being, carried on even while, crops are * brairding." And he would also^haVe' known that "springing and brairding are entirely different things. As to the sun being high it is only too easy to see that Cyclop does not rise very early, or he would have known that in October and November t&g sanri hfcs;' ascended a sufficient distance at eight-o'clock-in the morning to justify the poet in saying it was '■ high." Nnvr about the syntax. Cyclop evidently haj> « great difficulty in ascertaining whether the zone or the Bbield is resplendent. The veriest tyro in (versification, can see that the lines quoted? do not form a - complete sentence. Tjugf werii merely chosen! as forming a mental picture. He might as well have asked whether the ploughmen or the teams had "glossy hides." To return to the shield. The shield is meant to do the shining, and as the objectionabioiword^a^e not /bracketed so that they could" 1 fee dropped' I am afraid poor Cyclop must let; them remain as they are. And now as to number.' Cyclop, lam afraid, belongs to that class who call glory glori, and . glorious glps-i*QW.' The whole .criticism is evidently hung upon the peg of that joke,hoary with antiqni fey , about knocking the i out of ike Qneeii's English, and in attempting to be funny he 1 has only succeeded in being f'imr r fe^ - - The Reviewer.