Beside such grotesque literary horse-play as this, with a gravity startling in its unexpected daring, Field proceeded to attribute to the venerable jurist one of the simplest and purest lullabies that ever came from his own pen, opening with: _I hear Thy voice, dear Lord; I hear it by the stormy sea When winter nights are bleak and wild, And when, affright, I call to Thee; It calms my fears and whispers me, "Sleep well, my child."_ Then follows "The Vision of the Holy Grail," one of those exercises in archaic English in which Field took infinite pains as well as delight, and to which, as a production of Judge Cooley's, he paid the passing tribute of saying that it was "a graceful imitation of old English." As an example of the judge's humorous vein Field printed the conclusion of his lines "To a Blue Jay": _When I had shooed the bird away And plucked the plums--a quart or more-- I noted that the saucy jay, Albeit he had naught to say, Appeared much bluer than before._ After crediting the judge with a purposely awful parody on "Dixie," in which "banner" is made to rhyme with "Savannah," and "holy" with "Pensacola," Field concluded the whimsical fabrication with the serious comment: "It seems a pity that such poetic talent as Judge Cooley evinced was not suffered to develop. His increasing professional duties and his political employments put a quietus to those finer intellectual indulgences with which his earlier years were fruitful." 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.