Date: 1773
"Smooth like her verse her passions learned to move, / And her whole soul was harmony and love."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1777
"For the mind is an instrument, which, if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained, will abate of its vigour."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1780
"If my eventful tale / Hath touch'd the chords of pity in your heart, / And swell'd the sympathetic tear--soft tribute! / By gentle minds, to sorrow ever paid, / --Know, 'tis no stranger's woes I have related; / I am the object of my own sad story."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1782
"I meant to have repeated the lesson, to have tuned your whole heart to compassion, and to have taught you the sad duties of sympathising humanity."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1782
"Where are those cunning men, / Who boast, by chosen sounds, and measur'd sweetness, / To set the busy spirits in a flame, / And cool them at their will? who know the art / To call the hidden pow'rs of numbers forth, / And make that pliant instrument, the mind, / Yield to the pow'rful sympathy of...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1788
"The caresses of an animal he had so long remembered, touched some chord of the heart that vibrated to softer emotions than those which had for the last three hours possessed him--he burst into tears."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"Emmeline would then have taken him; but she said no; and sitting down on the ground, held him in her lap, till Barret who had seen her from a window, came out and took him from her; to which, as to a thing usual, she consented, and then walked calmly home with Emmeline, who, extremely discompose...
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1790
"His mind resembled a finetoned instrument, whose extensive compass was capable of producing the most sublime and elevating sounds; but a fatal pressure relaxed the strings, and sunk its powerful harmony."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1794
"'Yes,' said he, with an half-suppressed sigh, 'the memory of those we love--of times for ever past! in such an hour as this steals upon the mind, like a strain of distant music in the stillness of night;--all tender and harmonious as this landscape, sleeping in the mellow moon-light.'"
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)
Date: April 20, 1796
"Ere yet we were, / Our finer tones of mind some guardian spirit / Touch'd into harmony; and, when we met, / Th' according strings struck forth a sound so sweet, / That heav'n itself might listen! love! ev'n love, / That brand of discord, burns within our bosoms, / Pale—cold—before the steady fla...
preview | full record— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)