date. It is ascribed by Plutarch to Pigres, the brother of the
Halicarnassian Queen, Artemisia, contemporary with the Persian War. This
poem, which is a parody on Homer, reminds us, in its microscopic
representation of human affairs, of the travels of Gulliver in Lilliput.
A frog offers to give a mouse a ride across the water on his back.
Unfortunately, a water-snake lifts up its head when they are in the
middle passage, and the frog diving to avoid the danger, the mouse is
drowned. From this trifling cause there arises a mighty war between the
frogs and the mice. The contest is carried on in true Homeric style; the
mice-warriors are armed with bean-pods for greaves, lamp-bosses for
shields, nutshells for helmets, and long needles for spears. The frogs
have leaves of willow on their legs, cabbage leaves for shields,
cockle-shells for helmets, and bulrushes for spears. Their names are
suggestive, as in a modern pantomime. Among the mice we have
Crumb-stealer, Cheese-scooper, and Lick-dish; among the frogs,
Puff-cheeks, Loud-croaker, Muddyman, Lovemarsh, &c.




PART II.

GREEK HUMOUR.

Birth of Humour--Personalities--Story of Hippocleides--Origin of
Comedy--Archilochus--Hipponax--Democritus, the Laughing
Philosopher--Aristophanes--Humour of the
Senses--Indelicacy--Enfeeblement of the Drama--Humorous
Games--Parasites, their Position and
Jests--Philoxenus--Diogenes--Court of Humour--Riddles--Silli.