The tail, the most insignificant part of an animal, is also often the most animated and fantastic.

An utterance of Browning is often like a strange animal walking backwards, who flourishes his tail with such energy that every one takes it for his head.

He was in other words, at least in his prose and practical utterances, more or less incapable of telling a story without telling the least important thing first.

If a man who belonged to an Italian secret society, one local branch of which bore as a badge an olive-green ribbon, had entered his house, and in some sensational interview tried to bribe or blackmail him, he would have told the story with great energy and indignation, but he would have been incapable of beginning with anything except the question of the colour of olives.

His whole method was founded both in literature and life upon the principle of the "ex pede Herculem," and at the beginning of his description of Hercules the foot appears some sizes larger than the hero.