"Then one deprived of both his hands, who stood
Lifting the bleeding stumps amid the dim
Dense air, so that his face was stain'd with blood,
Cried, 'In thy mind let Mosca bear a place,
Who said, alas! Deed done is well begun--
Words fraught with evil to the Tuscan race.'"
Disraeli adopts Cary's interpretation of the proverb, and does not seem
to suspect that it can have any other. Milton appears to have used it
in the same sense. "When deeply engaged," says Disraeli, "in writing
'The Defence of the People,' and warned that it might terminate in his
blindness, he resolutely concluded his work, exclaiming with great
magnanimity, although the fatal prognostication had been accomplished,
_Cosa fatta capo ha!_ Did this proverb also influence his decision
on that great national event, when the most honest-minded fluctuated
between doubts and fears?"
=The first blow is half the battle.=
It is as good as two according to the Italians.
=The hardest step is over the threshold.=
"The first step is all the difficulty" (French).[731] It is well
known that after St. Denis was decapitated he picked up his head,
and walked a league with it in his hand to the spot where his church
was afterwards erected. Recounting this miracle one day in a private
circle, Cardinal de Polignac laid great stress on the length of the
way traversed in that manner by the martyred saint; whereupon Madame
du Deffaut remarked that this was not the most surprising part of the
miracle, for in such cases "the first step was all the difficulty."
=Everything has a beginning.=
=A child must creep ere it can go.=
"Every beginning is feeble" (Latin).[732] "'Every beginning is hard,'
as the thief said when he began by stealing an anvil" (German).[733]
=Rome was not built in a day.=