Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry.
On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of Walpole, were condemned as failures.

When RACINE produced his "Athalie," it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece.

I have heard one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the fountain could never be dried up."-- "Your baggage will reach posterity," was observed.--"There is much to spare," was the answer.
Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers, are those which are the most criticised.

Modest critics shelter themselves under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects.
A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires them.

The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil.