These very hardships contributed greatly, no doubt, to the power of his poetry later on, even though they exerted a hardening effect upon his character, and aroused in him the firm resolve to acquire wealth at any cost.

Successful as his journalistic enterprises were in later life, it is known that he could not have assured himself the comfortable fortune he enjoyed from that source alone, and he is said to have won most of it at the gambling-table.

This fact and various other circumstances may have exercised some influence upon the judgment of a section of the public as to his literary work.

There is hardly any other Russian writer over whose merits such heated discussions take place as over Nekrasoff, one party maintaining that he was a true poet, with genuine inspiration; the other, that he was as clever with his poetry in a business sense, as he was with financial operations, and that he possessed no feeling, inspiration, or poetry.[27] The truth would seem to lie between these two extremes.

Like all the other writers of his day--like writers in general--he was unconsciously impressed by the spirit of the time, and changed his subjects and treatment as it changed; and like every other writer, some of his works are superior in feeling and truth to others.
The most important period of his life was that from 1841 to 1845, when his talent was forming and ripening.