self-consuming fire

Fire
William Blake

These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.  

--Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)

Guide me, gird me, guard me, this day, ye sovereign powers! Bind me in bonds I can not break; remove all sinister allurings from me; eternally this day deface in me the detested and distorted images of all the convenient lies and duty-subterfuges of the diving and ducking moralities of this earth. Fill me with consuming fire for them; to my life's muzzle, cram me with your own intent. Let no world-syren come to sing to me this day, and wheedle from me my undauntedness.  -- Herman Melville, Pierre (1852)

 "I. F. Ay! it is a fire that consumes; and sometimes burns to ashes the hearts and hopes of proud men..."  -- July 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border

The "fire that consumes" got revised to "false and self-consuming fire" in the book version of the July 1852 dialogue:

— A false and self-consuming fire! that sometimes burns to ashes the hearts and hopes of proud men...--Scenes and Adventures in the Army, page 333. 

I. F. in the July 1852 version stands for "Imaginary Friend." In the next installment, August 1852, the Imaginary Friend is named "Frank." In the 1857 book version, all references to the Imaginary Friend have been deleted and "Frank" is just called "Friend."