Robert Green Ingersoll (1898). “Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll: Including His Letters on the Chinese God--Is Suicide a Sin?--The Right to One's Life--etc. Etc. Etc”
Quoted in Nicholas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1953). Cassell's Humorous Quotations suggests that an earlier version of this jab appeared in a letter by the Fourth Earl of Sandwich in 1785, but no such anecdote is found in the book said to be the source.
William Shakespeare (1842). “The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakspere: Merry wives of Windsor. Twelfth night. As you like it. Measure for measure”, p.383