That Fellow Cannot Make a Blank Verse

 MEASURE OF THINGS.
   II. We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves. Nash, a poet, poor enough (as poets used to be) seeing an alderman with his gold chain, upon his great horse, by way of scorn, said to one of his companions, “Do you see yon fellow, how goodly, how big he looks; why that fellow cannot make a blank verse.”

John Selden, Table talk: being the discourses of John Selden, Esq. (London: printed for Joseph White, 1789; 1689), pp. 83-84.