Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, 1756 (1717-1797)
John and I are just going to Garrick’s with a grove of cypresses in our hands, like the Kentish men at the Conquest. He has built a temple to his master Shakespeare, and I am going to adorn the outside, since his modesty would not let me decorate it within, as I proposed, with these mottoes:
Quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.
That I spirit have and nature,
That sense breathes in ev’ry feature,
That I please, if please I do,—
Shakespeare,—all I owe to you.
Letter to George Montagu, 14 Oct. 1756. Letters, ed. Peter Cunningham, 1857, vol. iii. p. 36.