“COPY.”

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 106, 21 December 1878, Page 3

“COPY.”

The following passage on the advan- ■ of good penmanship is from a lively article on Literary Reminiscences in the ‘ New Zealand Times’:— It is more difficult than may be sup- ' posed to decide on the value of a work -in MS., and especially when the handwriting presents only a swell mob of bad characters, that must bo severally examined and re-examined to - arrive at the merits or demerits of the case. Print settles it, as Coleridge used, to ,say ; and to be candid, I have more than once reversed,' or greatly-modified, a previous verdict, .on , seeing a rough proof from the press. As editors too well know, it is next to impossible to ictain the tune of a stanza, or- the drift of an argument, whilst the mind has to scramble through a patch of scribble scrabble, as stiff as a gorse cover. The beauties of the piece will as naturally appear to disadvantage through such a medium, as the features of a pretty woman through a bad pane of glass ; and without doubt, many, a tolerable article has been consigned hand over head to the Balaam Box for want of a fair copy. Wherefore, Oye Poets and Proscrs, who aspire to write in Miscellanies, and above all, 0 ye palpitating Untried, w r ho meditate the offer of . your maiden essays, to established periodicals, take care, pray ye take care, to cultivate'a good, plain, hold, round text. Set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden for a model; and have an eye to your pothooks. Some persons hold that the best writers are those who write the best hands, and I have known the conductor of a magazineto be.converted by a crabbed MS. to the same opinion. Of all.things, therefore, be legible ; and to that enc, pmctise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take lessons of a writing master. Be sme to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best pens, and then sit dawn and do the best yon can ; as the do—put out your tongue, and take pains. So shall ye haply escape the rash rejection of a jaded editor ; so, having got. in your hand, it is possible that your head may follow and so, last not least, ye may fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes ruin a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into pappiness.