"Coleridge is dead," wrote Charles Lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity--not one of them complete!" Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.
Hogarth would rivet his attention upon a face and study it until it was photographed upon his memory, when he could reproduce it at will.

He studied and examined each object as eagerly as though he would never have a chance to see it again, and this habit of close observation enabled him to develop his work with marvelous detail.

The very modes of thought of the time in which he lived were reflected from his works.
He was not a man of great education or culture, except in his power of observation.
With an immense procession passing up Broadway, the streets lined with people, and bands playing lustily, Horace Greeley would sit upon the steps of the Astor House, use the top of his hat for a desk, and write an editorial for the "New York Tribune" which would be quoted far and wide.
Offended by a pungent article, a gentleman called at the "Tribune" office and inquired for the editor.

He was shown into a little seven-by-nine sanctum, where Greeley, with his head close down to his paper, sat scribbling away at a two-forty rate.

The angry man began by asking if this was Mr.Greeley.