Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.1
ATTRIBUTION:
Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811–1812.
Note 1. Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.—Percy Bysshe Shelley: Fragments of Adonais.
