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  • Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.

    Edward Gibbon (1826). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.275