94 The Poets and Nature. 



I have myself wondered that any one could ever have spoken 

 with admiration of their song, and am not surprised that 

 the Abderites should have been driven from their homes 

 by the intolerable monotony of the batrachian chorus. 

 How it exasperated Bacchus on his way to Hades that 



" Brekekex coax coax, brekekekex coax coax," 



of the persistent multitude ! 



In Menu's " After-world " there are twenty-one purgatories. 

 One of them is filled with mud ; and if the mud be filled 

 with frogs, I think I would rather be consigned to any one 

 of the other twenty ; albeit, I know that Indra's august 

 abode is enlivened, according to Hindoo legend, by " the 

 harmonious voices of the black bee and the frog." So, too, 

 in Aristophanes, Charon, laughing, says 



' ' You shall hear most delightful melodies as soon as you lay-to at your 



oars. 



From whom? 

 From swans the frogs wondrous ones." 



And the frogs have much to say in their own praise : 

 " Marshy offspring of the fountains we, let us raise our 

 voices in harmonious hymn brekekekex in sweet-sounding 

 song coax coax. Thus sung we in the marshes by the 

 Acropolis, making festal the rites of Nissean Bacchus. 

 Brekekekex coax coax. The Muses of the beautiful lyre love 

 us coax coax and so does horn-footed Pan who pipes 

 upon the reed brekekekex and Apollo, the sweet harper 

 brekekekex coax coax. So let us sing and leap, and leap 

 and sing again, through galingal and sedge, chanting as we 

 dive our choral strains to the music of breaking bubbles 

 brekekekex coax coax" 



Other poets, however, are not of Pan's opinion, nor of 

 Apollo's. They recognise no harmony in the voice of the 

 batrachians. Southey quotes it as the extreme antithesis of 

 melody. Spenser, in his " Epithalamium," warns them off 



