ith the
youthful confidence it inspired, he performed wonders, and was willing
to set a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He had done his
best; and, like another Empedocles, threw himself into AEtna, to ensure
immortality. The brazen slippers alone remain!--

___
[8] Burns.--These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr.
Wordsworth's poem of the LEECH-GATHERER.
___

LECTURE VII.
ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS.

I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture
respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some
persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters. What I
meant was less to call in question Chatterton's genius, than to object
to the common mode of estimating its magnitude by its prematureness. The
lists of fame are not filled with the dates of births or deaths; and the
side-mark of the age at which they were done, wears out in works
destined for immortality. Had Chatterton really done more, we should
have thought less of him, for our attention would then have been fixed
on the excellence of the works themselves, instead of the singularity of
the circumstances in which they were produced. But because he attained
to the full powers of manhood at an early age, I do not see that he
would have attained to more than those powers, had he lived to be a man.
He was a prodigy, because in him the ordinary march of nature was
violently precipitated; and it is therefore inferred, that he would have
continued to hold on his course, "unslacked of motion." On the contrary,
who knows but he might have lived to be poet-laureat? It is much better
to let him remain as he was. Of his actual productions, any one may
think as highly as he pleases; I would only guard against adding to the
account of his _quantum meruit_, those possible productions by which the
learned rhapsodists of his time raised his gigantic pretensions to an
equality with those of Homer and Shakspeare. It is amusing to read some
of these exaggerated descriptions, each rising above the other in
extravagance. In Anderson's Life, we find that Mr. Warton speaks of him
"as a prodigy of genius," as "a singular instance of prematurity of
abilities": that may be true enough, and Warton was at any rate a
competent judge; but Mr. Malone "believes him to have been the greatest
genius that England has produced since the days of Shakspeare." Dr.
Gregory says, "he must rank, as a univers