It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
Edward Gibbon, John Holroyd Earl of Sheffield (1837). “The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings”, p.97
