“It’s hard to listen to you with a straight face.”
Last week I had occasion to quote from Alexander Hamilton’s first revolutionary pamphlet, which he wrote as a teenage college student. (Man, what was I doing during my first semester at college?)
Today I have occasion to quote from Hamilton’s follow-up pamphlet, The Farmer Refuted:
Sir:—
I resume my pen, in reply to the curious epistle you have been pleased to favor me with, and can assure you that notwithstanding I am naturally of a grave and phlegmatic disposition, it has been the source of abundant merriment to me. The spirit that breathes throughout is so rancorous, illiberal, and imperious; the argumentative part of it is so puerile and fallacious; the misrepresentation of facts so palpable and flagrant; the criticisms so illiterate, trifling, and absurd; the conceits so low, sterile, and splenetic, that I will venture to pronounce it one of the most ludicrous performances which has been exhibited to public view during all the present controversy.
[…]
I congratulate myself upon the sentiments you entertain of my last performance. Such is my opinion of your abilities as a critic, that I very much prefer your disapprobation to your applause.
The entire pamphlet is well worth a read. Alexander Hamilton didn’t just throw shade; he completely blotted out the sun.
Frog of La Mancha 
OMG, he’s amazing.
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I know, right? He was only 18 or 20 when he wrote that (historians are conflicted about what year Hamilton was born), and accomplished so much in a relatively short time, but think about what he could have done if he hadn’t been shot and killed.
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