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first sign of marked literary talent, in a young person, is apt to be an omnivorous passion for books, followed, sooner or later, by the desire to produce something; this desire often taking experimental and fugitive forms. The study of “Sir James Mackintosh’s Life and Works,” at Groton, seems to have impressed Margaret Fuller strongly with the danger of miscellaneous and desultory preparation. She writes: —

“The copiousness of Sir J. Mackintosh’s reading journals is, I think, intimately connected with his literary indolence. Minds of great creative power take no pleasure in going into detail on the new materials they receive, — they assimilate them by meditation and new creations follow. A Scott, a Goethe, would neither talk out nor write down the reflections suggested by what the day had brought; they would be transfused into new works.”

Later, she had a vision of writing romances, like George Sand, and expressed herself thus in her diary: —