THE COMMON FROG. 97 



and swamps, bog and fen, treacherous to human 



feet, 



By night or by day, were you there about, 



You might see them creep in, or see them creep out. 



Dr. Hermann Masius says of the Frog he may be 

 looked upon as a character ; in popular stories, fairy 

 tales, and poesy, he plays no unimportant part. Full 

 of meaning is the myth of the Frogs of Latona ; 

 also the fable of their election of a king. iEsop 

 related it to the Athenians, when Pisistratus had 

 usurped the government ; and very lately its influ- 

 ence was put to the test by working it up into a 

 political drama. Aristophanes had already brought 

 the Frog people on the stage, just as two thousand 

 years later it appears to have furnished one of the 

 greatest German satirists with a welcome subject. 

 Unfortunately, of Fischart's " Froschgosch " the 

 name alone is preserved; another poem however, 

 which, in the heroic style of the Homerian epic, 

 sings the battle between the Frogs and Mice, affords 

 us a compensation. I mean the " Batrachomyoma- 

 chia," and the new version of it by Kollenhagen. 

 Appearing as it did towards the end of the sixteenth 

 century, " Froschmausler " was long, and very justly, 

 a favourite book of Protestant Germany. In 1787, 

 when Prussian troops marched into insurrectionary 

 Holland, a third frog epic appeared, as if to show 

 how inexhaustible the subject was. Thus has this 



