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Date: 1713

"Away the Skilful Doctor comes / Of Recipes and Med'cines full, / To check the giddy Whirl of Nature's Fires, / If so th' unruly Case requires; / Or with his Cobweb-cleansing Brooms / To sweep and clear the over-crouded Scull, / If settl'd Spirits flag, and make the Patient dull."

— Finch [née], Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1666-1720)

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Date: 1723, 1725

"Reflection was unhing'd; the noble Seat of Memory fill'd with Chimera's and disjointed Notions; wild and confus'd Ideas whirl'd in his distracted Brain; and all the Man, except the Form, was changed."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

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Date: 1734, 1735

"The Mind, in peaceful Solitude, has Room / To range in Thought, and ramble far from home."

— Barber, Mary (c.1685-1755)

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Date: 1753

"We often see that to reverse this boasted constancy is the work of but a single minute,--and then in vain their past professions recoil upon their minds;--in vain the idea of the forsaken fair haunts them in nightly visions."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

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Date: 1754

"At the early age of six years old I lost my father; yet his precepts were the principal foundation of all the instructions I afterwards received: for young as I was, he perceived (he said) the openings of a lively imagination; which, if directed into a right channel, would turn to my advantage, ...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

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Date: 1777

"But the heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

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Date: 1777

"At present in my brain there floats / A thousand parti-colored motes; / From which, if time would but permit, / I might sift some sparks of wit."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

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Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

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Date: 1791, 1794

"My daily employment is to think of you and weep, to pray for your happiness and deplore my own folly: my nights are scarce more happy, for if by chance I close my weary eyes, and hope some small forgetfulness of sorrow, some little time to pass in sweet oblivion, fancy, still waking, wafts me ho...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

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Date: 1794

"Retired to her lonely cabin, her melancholy thoughts still hovered round the body of her deceased parent; and, when she sunk into a kind of slumber, the images of her waking mind still haunted her fancy."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.