Date: 1759

"From the very kind and warm Expressions of fatherly Fondness in this Letter, a small Ray of Hope darted into Lady Dellwyn's Mind."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: w. 1739, 1762

Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"Where, to the Beam of intellectual Day, / The genuine Charms of moral Beauty play: / With pleasing Force the strong Attractions move / Each finer Sense, and tune it into Love."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"Pure from th' eternal Source of Being came / That Ray divine that lights the human Frame: / Yet oft, forgetful of it's heavenly Birth, / It sinks obscur'd beneath the Weight of the Earth: / Mechanic Pow'rs retard it's Flight, and hence / The Storms of Passion, and the Clouds of Sense: / 'Tis Lif...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"'Till then [death], the Muse essays the tuneful Art, / To fix her moral Lesson on thy Heart, / Illume thy Soul with Virtue's brightest Flame, / And point it to that Heav'n from whence it came."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1763

"I could have resisted her beauty only, but the mind which irradiates those speaking eyes"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1773

"While others,--consecrate to higher aims, / Whose hallowed bosoms glow with purer flames, / Love in their heart, persuasion in their tongue,-- / With words of peace shall charm the listening throng, / Draw the dread veil that wraps the' eternal throne, / And launch our souls into the bright unkn...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1774

"The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1774

"From sense abstracted, some, with arduous flight, / Explore the realms of intellectual light."

— Scott, Mary [later Taylor] (1751/2-1793)

Date: 1777

"The philosophical doctrine of the slow recession of bodies from the sun, is a lively image of the reluctance with which we first abandon the light of virtue."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)