Having launched this piece of literary drollery, over which he had studied and we had talked for a week or more, Field proceeded to clinch the verse-making on Judge Cooley by a series of letters to himself, one or two of which will indicate the fertile cleverness and humor he employed to cram his bald fabrication down the public gullet.  The first appeared on January 24th, in the following letter “to the Editor”: 

I have read Judge Cooley’s poems with a good deal of interest.  I am somewhat of a poet myself, having written sonnets and things now and then for the last twenty years.  My opinion is that Judge Cooley’s translations, paraphrases, and imitations, are much worthier than his original work.  I hold that no poet can be a true poet unless he is at the same time somewhat of a naturalist.  If Judge Cooley had been anything of a naturalist he would never have made such a serious blunder as he has made in his poem entitled “Lines to a Blue Jay.”  The idea of putting a blue jay into a plum-tree is simply shocking!  I don’t know when I’ve had anything grate so harshly upon my feelings as did this mistake when I discovered it this morning.  It is as awful as the blunder made by one of the modern British poets (I forget his name) in referring to the alligators paddling about in Lake Erie.  The blue jay (Cyanurus cristatus) does not eat plums, and therefore does not infest plum-trees.

  Yours truly,

  CADMON E. BATES.

Upon which Field, in his editorial plurality, commented: 

To Professor Bates’s criticism we shall venture no reply.  We think, however, that allowance should be made for the youth of the poet when he committed the offence which so grievously torments our correspondent.  It might be argued, too, that the jay of which the poet treats is no ordinary bird, but is one of those omnivorous creatures which greedily pounce upon everything coming within their predatory reach.

And two days later he made bold to crush the judge’s critics with letters from the same versatile pen that never failed to aid in the furtherance of its master’s hoaxes: 

To the Editor:  Prof.  Bates may be a good taxidermist, but he knows little of ornithology.  Never before he spoke was it denied that the Cyanurus cristatus (blue jay) fed upon plums.  All the insect-eating birds also eat of the small fruits.  It is plain that the poet knew this, even though the taxidermist didn’t.

  Yours truly,

  L.R.  COWPERTHWAITE.

To the Editor:  Isn’t Prof.  Bates too severe in his claim that genius like that of the poetic Judge Cooley should be bound down by the prosaic facts of ornithology?  Milton scorned fidelity to nature, especially when it came to ornithological details, and poets, as a class, have been singularly wayward in this respect.  My impression is that Judge Cooley has simply made use of a poetic license which any fair-minded person should be willing to concede the votaries of the muse.

  Yours truly,