238 The Poets and Nature. 



mendicant with a good grain of wheat. ^Esop reproduced 

 the idea, and the first of La Fontaine's fables is a version of 

 the Phrygian's 



' ' A grasshopper gay 

 Sang the summer away," 



and, having nothing to eat in winter, 



"A begging she went 

 To her neighbour the ant," 



who asks her what did she all the rest of the year that she 

 now finds herself in such wretched case. The grasshopper 

 confesses she sang for all comers. "Sang indeed!" is the 

 emmet's unsympathetic reply, " Then now you must dance." 



"The remiss 



Dimetians, who along their mossy dales 

 Consume, like grasshoppers, the summer hour, 

 While round them stubborn thorns and furze increase, 

 And creeping briars." Dyer. 



In the poets the same fable frequently recurs. Spenser 

 starts it in the " Shepherd's Calendar "- 



" And my poor muse hath spent her spare store, 

 Yet little good hath got, and much less gain, 

 Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor, 

 And beg for bread when winter doth her strain," 



and others repeat it both of the grasshopper and the cricket. 

 Now this fancy is more curious than at first appears ; for 

 this reason. There is actually a grasshopper which lives 

 with ants, and shares their home with them, under some 

 such queer arrangement for reciprocity as makes it possible 

 for owls and snakes to share the marmot's dwelling. Upon 

 what terms the ant tolerates the grasshopper does not appear, 

 or how the grasshopper justifies its partnership. Yet there 

 it is. The modus vivendi has been found ; and incongruous 

 as the association seems, it must evidently have some 

 recommendations that satisfy both parties, or else it could 

 not exist. 



