.,
NOTES AND QUERIES.
303
01 ly praised the first Edition, and I don't know
w lere to lay my hands on that."
T iese words clearly establish the fact that a se ^ond edition was issued, and as I am pre- paring some notes for a bibliography of F tzGerald I should be grateful for any details re garding it.
By the year 1882 FitzGerald had made several new friends who were desirous of having a copy of the dialogue, and as no more copies remained in his own possession he had fifty impressions struck off in the May of that year by Messrs. Billing & Sons, of Guildford, to whose courtesy I am indebted for this information. It was one of these copies that he gave to the present Lord Tennyson with his letter, dated 28 May, 1882, in which he alludes to the references to his old college friend on pp. 25 and 56. No finer homage from one poet to another can be found in literature than the description of Tennyson in the last-cited passage. A few copies of this impression seem to have been in FitzGerald's hands at the time of his death, ', and to have been then transferred to Mr. Quaritch, from whom I remember buying a
- copy some fifteen years ago.
The Athenaeum is, perhaps, scarcely accurate i in saying that the 1851 ' Euphranor ' was Fitz- i Gerald's " first printed production." Dr. Aldis Wright has shown that FitzGerald first ap- i peared in print with some lines called * The Meadows in Spring,' which were published in i Hone's ' Year Book' for 30 April, 1831. Shortly afterwards they appeared, Avith a few verbal changes, in the Athenceum for 9 July, 1831, 1 accompanied by a note of the editor's, from which it is evident that he supposed them to | have been written by Lamb. Dr. Aldis I Wright has printed these verses in the intro- ductory part of his two editions of Fitz- Gerald's ' Letters.' In 1849 FitzGerald wrote a memoir, extending to twenty-eight pages, which was prefixed to a ' Selection from the (Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton,' edited |by the daughter whom FitzGerald subse- quently married. FitzGerald himself, in a etter to the late Mr. Frederick Tennyson, Deports that he has been " obliged to contri- 3ute a little dapper Memoir, as well as to select bits of Letters, bits of Poems, etc.," and he promises, on his friend's return to England, to give him u this little book of _ncredibly small value." It is, indeed, Fitz- gerald's share in the book that gives it its 'hief value, and it seems a pity that Dr. Wright did not include in his collected edition of his friend's works this, in his own words, "delightful piece of biography." In the art of depicting character FitzGerald was
a past master, and there are few more perfect
pieces of English prose than those in which
fie describes his old friend the Quaker poet.
I should be glad if space could be found for
one short passage :
' But nowhere was he more amiable than in some of those humbler meetings about the fire in the keeping-room at Christmas, or under the walnut- tree in summer. He had his cheerful remembrances with the old ; a playful word for the young espe- cially with children whom he loved and was loved by. Or, on some summer afternoon, perhaps, at the little inn on the heath, or by the river-side, or when, after a pleasant pic-nic on the sea-shore, we drifted homeward up the river, while the breeze died away at sunset, and the heron, at last startled by our gliding boat, slowly rose from the ooze over which the tide was momentarily encroaching."
W. F. PRIDEAUX. 45, Pall Mall, S.W.
CUTTING THE FROG. About fifty years ago there was a custom in this parish called "Cutting the Frog" used at harvest time. Some of the stalks of the last corn reaped, of whatever kind it might be, were plaited together, and this was called "The Frog." "Frog" I conclude is another form of "Frock," and so equivalent to "Neck" (sometimes corrupted into "Knack") in the expression "Crying the Neck": both "Frock" and "Neck" implying "plaiting." In the old smock-frock the " f rocking " was the plaited ornamentation of it. " Cutting the Frog " appears to have been used in two senses : (a) for cutting or reaping up to the last stalks, or (6) for cutting through these stalks after the plaiting had taken place ; and the doing of one or both of these was regarded as an honour. As the reapers changed places after each "drift" or "bout," it could not be told to whose lot it would fall to cut up to the last corn in a field, that is to say, who would be the hindmost man. It was, too, of course, a matter of uncertainty who would be success- ful in cutting through the plaited stalks by throwing at them a sickle, held by its point. I do not find that any prize hereabouts was given for "Cutting the Frog" in either sense. Nor do I find that there was any custom of " Crying the Frog " to correspond with the old custom of "Crying the Neck" which prevailed elsewhere. There was clearly a custom in some parts of " Cutting the Neck " by throwing at it sickles held by the point, and then the "Neck" was held up and "cried," that is to say, the question was asked as to whom it should be sent, the reply being the mention of the name of the most dilatory farmer of the neighbourhood, this being the usual mode of jeering at him for being late in his work. Sometimes "Neck" was varied
