"I cannot find in Chatterton's works any thing so extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a boy of twenty. He did not show extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves."
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William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1818) p. 243.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton
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Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet, claimed by some as the father of English Romantic poetry. A literary forger, he is best remembered for his verses in pseudo-medieval English, which he claimed were by a hitherto unknown 15th century poet called Thomas Rowley. He died, either by suicide or by accidental overdose, at the age of 17.
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