John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir — Complete. Oliver Wendell Holmes

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       was in time wise enough to retrieve. Pushing out as I did, without

       compass and without experience, on the boundless ocean of learning,

       what could I expect but an utter and a hopeless shipwreck?

       “Thus I went on, becoming more learned, and therefore more ignorant,

       more confused in my brain, and more awkward in my habits, from day

       to day. I was ever at my studies, and could hardly be prevailed

       upon to allot a moment to exercise or recreation. I breakfasted

       with a pen behind my ear, and dined in company with a folio bigger

       than the table. I became solitary and morose, the necessary

       consequence of reckless study; talked impatiently of the value of my

       time, and the immensity of my labors; spoke contemptuously of the

       learning and acquirements of the whole world, and threw out

       mysterious hints of the magnitude and importance of my own project.

       “In the midst of all this study and this infant authorship the

       perusal of such masses of poetry could not fail to produce their

       effect. Of a youth whose mind, like mine at that period, possessed

       some general capability, without perhaps a single prominent and

       marked talent, a proneness to imitation is sure to be the besetting

       sin. I consequently, for a large portion of my earlier life, never

       read a work which struck my fancy, without planning a better one

       upon its model; for my ambition, like my vanity, knew no bounds.

       It was a matter of course that I should be attacked by the poetic

       mania. I took the infection at the usual time, went through its

       various stages, and recovered as soon as could be expected. I

       discovered soon enough that emulation is not capability, and he is

       fortunate to whom is soonest revealed the relative extent of his

       ambition and his powers.

       “My ambition was boundless; my dreams of glory were not confined to

       authorship and literature alone; but every sphere in which the

       intellect of man exerts itself revolved in a blaze of light before

       me. And there I sat in my solitude and dreamed such wondrous

       dreams! Events were thickening around me which were soon to change

       the world, but they were unmarked by me. The country was changing

       to a mighty theatre, on whose stage those who were as great as I

       fancied myself to be were to enact a stupendous drama in which I had

       no part. I saw it not; I knew it not; and yet how infinitely

       beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude! Fancy shook her

       kaleidoscope each moment as chance directed, and lo! what new,

       fantastic, brilliant, but what unmeaning visions. My ambitious

       anticipations were as boundless as they were various and

       conflicting. There was not a path which leads to glory in which I

       was not destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer

       and overrun the world. As a statesman I would reorganize and govern

       it. As a historian I would consign it all to immortality; and in my

       leisure moments I would be a great poet and a man of the world.

       “In short, I was already enrolled in that large category of what are

       called young men of genius—men who are the pride of their sisters

       and the glory of their grandmothers—men of whom unheard-of things

       are expected, till after long preparation comes a portentous

       failure, and then they are forgotten; subsiding into indifferent

       apprentices and attorneys' clerks.

       “Alas for the golden imaginations of our youth! They are bright and

       beautiful, but they fade. They glitter brightly enough to deceive

       the wisest and most cautious, and we garner them up in the most

       secret caskets of our hearts; but are they not like the coins which

       the Dervise gave the merchant in the story? When we look for them

       the next morning, do we not find them withered leaves?”