96 The Poets and Nature. 



mends itself to me. For I should be glad to be convinced 

 that the moist and garrulous things had souls. They have 

 got calves to their legs, a feature which, if I am not wrong, 

 no other animal but man possesses. 



Yet, when in company, they have a wide range of ex- 

 pression from the crisp, shrill chirrup of the tree-frogs, to the 

 loud snore of the " Cambridge nightingales." The multi- 

 tudes of the Arkansas swamps have a nasal metallic "yank- 

 yank," as different as possible from the deep a owk-owk" 

 of the French frogs. The fire-bellied toad has a clear, reso- 

 nant voice, the bull-frog a profoundly sonorous one. The 

 natter-jack cries "gloo-gloo," the green toad "may-may," 

 while, for the noises of the rest, the frog-chorus of Aristo- 

 phanes, already quoted, renders them faithfully enough by 

 brekekekex and coax coax. 



Again and again in legends they are struck dumb ; now 

 by saints for disturbing devotions, and now by nymphs for 

 defiling fountains. On the other hand, men are punished by 

 being made to croak 



" As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs 

 Railed at Latona's twin- born progeny." 



In Syriapha, blessed isle, the frogs were voiceless ; and it is 

 a fact that the illustrious Mecsenas bore a frog for his device 

 as an emblem of taciturnity, borrowed from those batrachians 

 on the shores of the ^Egean, who " never croak in their own 

 marshes," according to yElian. " Mute the same is, and 

 never croaketh," saith Pliny. Emblematic, therefore, of 

 silence and secrecy, qualites for which Augustus held 

 Mecsenas in such respect and favour. 



The " bull-frog," which I take to be a corruption of bell- 

 frog, let philologists say what they like, is not an aversion 

 of the poets. It is "deep-mouthed and doubly harsh " in 

 Byron, and Faber has 



