Alfieri imagined himself to be a great poetic genius, and a great dramatic innovator: he scorned with loathing the works of corneille, of Racine, and of Voltaire, all immeasurably more valuable as poetry and drama than his own; he hated the works of Metastasio, a poet and a playwright by the divine right of genius; he refused to read Shakespeare, lest Shakespeare should spoil the perfection of his own conceptions.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
He states that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before corneille put it in verse.
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell
Oldmixon seems to have had more than one purpose for writing the Essay; one of them is made quite clear in the second paragraph: I shall not, in this Essay, enter into the philosophical Part of Criticism which corneille complains of, and that Aristotle and his Commentators have treated of Poetry, rather as Philosophers than Poets.
"An Essay on Criticism"
John Oldmixon