The Time ful Frog. 91 



" New lungs and limbs proclaim his second birth, 

 Breathe the dry air, and leap upon the earth." 



"Frogs and toads and all the tadpole train" are un- 

 popular with the poets. They dislike their appearance and 

 detest their voice. They remember, too, against them the 

 description in Holy Writ of "the croaking nuisance" of 

 Egyptian chastisement : 



" The river yet gave one instruction more, 

 And from the rotting fish and uncococted gore, 

 Which was but water just before, 

 A loathsome host was quickly made 

 That scal'd the banks, and with loud noise 

 Did all the countryside invade, 

 As Nilus when he quits his sacred bed 

 (But like a friend he visits all the lands) 

 With welcome presents in his hands. 

 So did this living tide the fields o'erspread. 

 In vain th' alarmed country cries 

 To kill their noisome enemies ; 



From th' unexhausted source still new recruits arise. 

 Nor does the earth these greedy troops suffice ; 

 The towns and houses they possess, 

 The temples and the palaces, 

 Nor Pharaoh nor his gods they fear, 

 Both.their importune croakings hear ; 

 Unsatiate yet, they mount up high'r, 

 Where never sun-born frog durst to aspire, 

 And in the silken beds their slimy members place, 

 A luxury unknown before to all the watr'y race." Cowley. 



In the New Testament the batrachian folk are only once 

 mentioned. "And I saw," says St. John in the Revelation, 

 " three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of 

 the dragon and out of the mouth of the Beast, and out of 

 the mouth of the False Prophet." In the Old they recur 

 three times, and always in the same association, as the 

 instrument of Osirtesen's humbling : 



" That croaked the Jews 

 From Pharaoh's brick-kilns loose" 



on the day when his borders were smitten with frogs 



