Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began,
So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter be mute:
'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: At a summer Assizes holden at _Hartfort_, while the Judge
was sitting upon the Bench, comes this old _Tod_ into the Court,
cloathed in a green Suit with his Leathern Girdle in his hand, his bosom
open, and all on a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and, being
come in, he spake aloud as follows: _My Lord_, said he, _Here is the
veryest Rogue that breaths upon the face of the earth, ... My Lord,
there has not been a Robbery committed this many years, within so many
miles of this place but I have either been at it or privy to it._

"The Judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference with
some of the Justices, they agreed to Indict him; and so they did, of
several felonious Actions; to all of which he heartily confessed Guilty,
and so was hanged with his wife at the same time....

"As for the truth of this Story, the Relator told me that he was at the
same time himself in the Court, and stood within less than two yards of
old _Tod_, when he heard him aloud to utter the words."--Bunyan's _Life
and Death of Mr. Badman_, 1680.]

28. DRAMATIC IDYLS. Second Series.

[Published in July, 1880. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XV.
pp. 81-163.]

The second series of _Dramatic Idyls_ is bound together, like the first,
though somewhat less closely, by a leading idea, which, whether
consciously or not, is hinted at in a pointed little prologue: the idea
of the paradox of human action, and the apparent antagonism between
motive and result. The volume differs considerably from its precursor,
and it contains nothing quite equal to the best of the earlier poems.
There is more variety, perhaps, but the human interest is less intense,
the stories less moving and absorbing. With less humour, there is a much
more pronounced element of the grotesque. And most prominent of all is
that characteristic of Browning which a great critic has called agility
of intellect.

The first poem, _Echetlos_, is full of heroical ardour and firm, manly
vigour of movement. Like _Pheidippides_, it is a legend of Marathon. It
sings of the mysterious helper who appeared to the Greeks, in rustic
garb and armed with a plough.

"But one man kept no rank and his sole arm plied no spear,
As a flas