gainst popular
outcry, nor fitting his body for action, but suffering it to languish
through mere sloth and negligence.

Another time, when the assembly had refused to hear him, and he was
going home with his head muffled up, taking it very heavily, they
relate that Satyrus, the actor followed him, and being his familiar
acquaintance, entered into conversation with him. To whom Demosthenes
bemoaned, that although he had been the most industrious of all the
pleaders, and had spent almost the whole strength and vigor of his
body in that employment, he could not yet find any acceptance with the
people, while drunken sots, mariners, and illiterate fellows were heard,
and had the hustings for their own. "You say true, Demosthenes," replied
Satyrus, "but I will quickly remedy the cause of all this, if you
will repeat to me some passage out of Euripides or Sophocles." When
Demosthenes had pronounced one, Satyrus presently taking it up after
him, gave the same passage, in his rendering of it, such a new form, by
accompanying it with the proper mien and gesture, that to Demosthenes it
seemed quite another thing. By this being convinced how much grace and
ornament language acquires from action, he began to esteem it a
small matter, and as good as nothing for a man to exercise himself in
declaiming, if he neglected enunciation and delivery. Hereupon he built
himself a place under ground to study in (which was still remaining in
our time), and hither he would come constantly every day to form
his action, and to exercise his voice; and here he would continue,
oftentimes without intermission, two or three months together, shaving
one half of his head, so that for shame he might not go abroad, though
he desired it never so much.

Nor was this all, but he also made his conversation with people abroad,
his common speech, and his business, subservient to his studies, taking
from hence occasions and arguments as matter to work upon. For as soon
as he was parted from his company, down he would go at once into his
study, and run over everything in order that had passed, and the reasons
that might be alleged for and against it. Any speeches, also, that he
was present at, he would go over again with himself, and reduce into
periods; and whatever others spoke to him, or he to them, he would
correct, transform, and vary in several ways. Hence it was, that he was
looked upon as a person of no great natural genius, but one who owed all
the powe