[Footnote A:  His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he described as consisting of millions obtained for him the nickname of Marco Milione among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of Eastern travel.  Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to retract his statements, which he indignantly refused.  It was long after ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian populace gave his house the name La Corte di Milioni:  and a vulgar caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their carnivals, who was termed Marco Milione; and delighted them with the most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.—­ED.]

HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established:  no physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their astonishment that it had ever escaped observation.  Incredulity and envy are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their tomb, and there only have vanished.—­But I seem writing the “calamities of authors,” and have only begun the catalogue.

The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than any other.  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