that
harangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the best
speech ever made in the House of Commons.

"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do
first," said William Wirt, "will do neither." The man who resolves, but
suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of
a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and
veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every
breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or
useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best
stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.

Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their
works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have
been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace
of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years
incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he
wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his
style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures.
Virgil worked eleven years on the AEneid. The note-books of great men
like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of the
years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was
twenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis," yet you can read it in
sixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations." A
rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on
three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your five
hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my three
lines will live forever," replied Euripides.

Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devoted
twice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means and
extraordinary application have done most of the great things in the
world.

Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers and
all but one refused it. Addison's first play, Rosamond, was hissed off
the stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of stern
stuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and it
did.

David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through the
press can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The process
has increased my respect for authors a thous