y, the soft impeachment of the hoax. _Et hine ille irae_.
We should have waited a couple of days."

It is scarcely necessary to suggest that this must have been written
before he had quite recovered from the long intoxication which maddened
him at the time to which it refers--that he was not born in Boston-that
the poem was not published in his tenth year, and that the "hoax" was all
an after-thought. Two weeks later he renewed the discussion of the
subject in _The Broadway Journal_, commenting as follows upon allusions
to it by other parties:

"Were the question demanded of us--'What is the most exquisite of
sublunary pleasures?' we should reply, without hesitation, the making a
fuss, or in the classical words of a western friend, the 'kicking up a
bobbery.' Never was a 'bobbery' more delightful than that which we have
just succeeded in 'kicking up' all around about Boston Common. We never
saw the Frogpondians so lively in our lives. They seem absolutely to be
upon the point of waking up. In about nine days the puppies may get open
their eyes. That is to say, they may get open their eyes to certain facts
which have long been obvious to all the world except themselves-the
facts that there exist other cities than Boston--other men of letters
than Professor Longfellow--other vehicles of literary information than
the _Down-East Review_.'

"We had _tact_ enough not to be 'taken in and done for' by the
Bostonians. _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_--(for _timeo_ substitute
_contemno_ or _turn-up-your-nose-o_.) We knew very well that among a
certain _clique_ of the Frogpondians, there existed a predetermination to
abuse us under _any_ circumstances. We knew, that write what we would,
they would swear it to be worthless. We knew, that were we to compose for
them a 'Paradise Lost,' they would pronounce it an indifferent poem. It
would have been very weak in us, then, to put ourselves to the trouble of
attempting to please these people. We preferred pleasing ourselves. We
read before them a 'juvenile'--a _very_ 'juvenile' poem--and thus the
Frogpondians were _had_--were delivered up to the enemy bound hand and
foot. Never were a set of people more completely demolished. They have
blustered and flustered--but what have they done or said that has not
made them more thoroughly ridiculous? What, in the name of Momus, is it
_possible_ for them to do or say? We 'delivered' them the 'juvenile
poem,' and they received it with applause. T