I agree with a great German writer, that in the first walks of Art no man has a right to enter, unless he is convinced that he has strength and speed for the goal.
Castruccio might be an amiable member of society, nay, an able and useful man, if he would apply the powers he possesses to the rewards they may obtain.

He has talent enough to win him reputation in any profession but that of a poet." "But authors who obtain immortality are not always first-rate." "First-rate in their way, I suspect; even if that way be false or trivial.

They must be connected with the _history_ of their literature; you must be able to say of them, 'In this school, be it bad or good, they exerted such and such an influence;' in a word, they must form a link in the great chain of a nation's authors, which may be afterwards forgotten by the superficial, but without which the chain would be incomplete.

And thus, if not first-rate for all time, they have been first-rate in their own day.

But Castruccio is only the echo of others--he can neither found a school nor ruin one.