William Whitehead, 1762 (1715-1785)
But chief avoid the boisterous roaring sparks,
The sons of fire!—you’ll know them by their marks.
Fond to be heard, they always court a crowd,
And, though ’tis borrow’d nonsense, talk it loud.
One epithet supplies their constant chime,
Damn’d bad, damn’d good, damn’d low, or damn’d sublime.
But most in quick short repartee they shine,
Of local humour; or from plays purloin
Each quaint stale scrap which every subject hits,
Till fools almost imagine, they are wits.
Hear them on Shakespeare! there they foam, they rage!
Yet taste not half the beauties of his page,
Nor see that art, as well as nature strove,
To place him foremost in th’ Aonian grove.
For there, there only, where the sisters join,
His genius triumphs, and the work’s divine.
Or would ye sift more near these sons of fire,
’Tis Garrick, and not Shakespeare, they admire,
Without his breath, inspiring every thought,
They ne’er perhaps had known what Shakespeare wrote;
Without his eager, his becoming zeal,
To teach them, though they scarce know why, to feel,
A crude unmeaning mass had Jonson been,
And a dead letter Shakespeare’s noblest scene.
A Charge to the Poets. 1762, ll. 167-190.