Ambitious in the current sense of worldly success he was not. The
praise of men stirred a haunting mistrust of their judgment and his
own worthiness. Honours he valued as evidences of power; but no more.
What possessed him was, as he confessed in a letter meant only for
the eye of his future wife, "an enormous longing after the highest and
best in all shapes--a longing which haunts me and is the demon which
ever impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing
his behests." With the sense of power stirring within him, he
refused to be beholden to any man. Patronage he abhorred in an ago
of patronage. He was ready to accept a helping hand from any one who
thought him capable of forwarding the great cause in ever so small a
way; but on no other terms. If the time had come to speak out on any
matter, he was resolved to let no merely personal influence restrain
him. He cared only for the praise or blame of the understanding few.
Whatever the popular judgment, he knew there was a work to be done and
that he had power to do it; and this was his personal ambition--to
do that work in the world, and to do it without cant and humbug and
self-seeking. Such were the aims that, newly returned to England, he
confides to the sister who had ever prophesied great things of "her
boy"; and in the end he made good the works spoken so boldly, yet
surely in no mere spirit of boasting.
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