If all this means what it is very possible was originally intended only
to be meant, that in order to cultivate an art, a man secludes himself
from the commerce of the world, and retires into the country at
particular seasons; or that at one time of the year his body is in better
health, and consequently his mind fitter for the business of hard
thinking than at another time; or that the mind may be fatigued and grow
confused by long and unremitted application; this I can understand. I
can likewise believe that a man eminent when young for possessing
poetical imagination, may, from having taken another road, so neglect its
cultivation as to show less of its powers in his latter life. But I am
persuaded that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden,
who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his
profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with
the fire of imagination as those which were produced in his more youthful
days.

To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in poetical
language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude that because painters
sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged
boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper
what he was to write, and that he is himself but a mere machine,
unconscious of the operations of his own mind.

Opinions generally received and floating in the world, whether true or
false, we naturally adopt and make our own; they may be considered as a
kind of inheritance to which we succeed and are tenants for life, and
which we leave to our posterity very near in the condition in which we
received it; not much being in any one man's power either to impair or
improve it.