_The following lines were written by Butler in February_, 1864, _and appeared in the_ PRESS. _They refer to a visit paid to New Zealand by a team of English cricketers_, _and have kindly been copied and sent to me by Miss Colborne-Veel_, _whose father was editor of the_ PRESS _at the time that Butler was writing for it_. _Miss Colborne-Veel has further permitted to me to make use of the following explanatory note_: “_The coming of the All England team was naturally a glorious event in a province only fourteen years old_. _The Mayor and Councillors had_ ‘_a car of state_’—_otherwise a brake_—‘_with postilions in the English style_.’_ Cobb and Co. supplied a six-horse coach for the English eleven_, _the yellow paint upon which suggested the_ ‘_glittering chariot of pure gold_.’ _So they drove in triumph from the station and through the town_. _Tinley for England and Tennant for Canterbury were the heroes of the match_. _At the Wednesday dinner referred to they exchanged compliments and cricket balls across the table_. _This early esteem for cricket may be explained by a remark made by the All England captain_, _that_ ‘_on no cricket ground in any colony had he met so many public school men_, _especially men from old Rugby_, _as at Canterbury_.’” [To the Editor, the _Press_, February 15th, 1864.] SIR—The following lines, which profess to have been written by a friend of mine at three o’clock in the morning after the dinner of Wednesday last, have been presented to myself with a request that I should forward them to you. I would suggest to the writer of them the following quotation from “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, S.B. “You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent; let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, _caret_ . . . _Imitari_ is nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider.” Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV, S. 2. HORATIO . . .