Page:Self-help with illustrations of conduct and perseverance (IA selfhelpwithillu00smiliala).pdf/441

 of all things most wanted in mechanical engineering was a history of failures: "We want," he said, "a book of blots." When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a dexterously manipulated experiment, he said—"I thank God I was not made a dexterous manipulator, for the most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by failures." Another distinguished investigator in physical science has left it on record that, whenever in the course of his researches he encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he generally found himself on the brink of some discovery. The very greatest things—great thoughts, discoveries, inventions—have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty.

Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the stuff to have made a good musician if he had only, when a boy, been well flogged; but that he had been spoilt by the facility with which he produced. Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to encounter adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue praise and too friendly criticism. When Mendelssohn was about to enter the orchestra at Birmingham, on the first performance of his 'Elijah,' he said laughingly to one of his friends and critics, "Stick your claws into me! Don't tell me what you like, but what you don't like!"

It has been said, and truly, that it is the defeat that tries the general more than the victory. Washington lost more battles than he gained; but he succeeded in the end. The Romans, in their most victorious campaigns, almost invariably began with defeats. Moreau used to be compared by his