Shakespeare†was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there† He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

What a dull, insipid thing is a billet-doux written in cold blood, after the heat of the business is over!

-Etherege, Sir George
  The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter, act1, sc.1.

Simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid.

-Hogarth,William
  The Analysis of Beauty.