Date: 1766
"For Brag [a card game] most wisely was design'd, / To shew each pimple of the mind, / The faithful mirror of the heart, / Each lurking foible to impart."
preview | full record— Jemmat [née Yeo], Catherine (bap. 1714, d. 1766?)
Date: 1767
"How transitory have been all my pleasures! the recollection of them dies on my memory, like the departing colours of the rainbow, which fades under the eye of the beholder, and leaves not a trace behind."
preview | full record— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)
Date: 1773
"Soaring though air to find the bright abode, / Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God, / We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, / And leave the rolling universe behind; / From star to star the mental optics rove, / Measure the skies, and range the realms above."
preview | full record— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)
Date: 1777
"As it is the character of Genius to penetrate with a lynx's beam into unfathomable abysses and uncreated worlds, and to see what is not, so it is the property of good sense to distinguish perfectly, and judge accurately what really is."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1781
"All that my SHAKESPEARE's energy exprest, / Shone in his fancy's mirror finely drest!"
preview | full record— Kilner, Dorothy (1755-1836) [attributed to]
Date: 1782
"Wisdom, blest beam! / The brightness of the everlasting light! / The spotlesss mirror of the pow'r of GOD! / The reflex image of th' all-perfect mind!"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1785
"In thy mild rhetoric dwells a social love / Beyond my wild conceptions, optics false!/ Thro' which I falsely judg'd of polish'd life"
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1786
"There was a time when my feelings gave the lie to their assertions; and holding the mirror of fancy before my eyes, shew'd me the future, in the happy present."
preview | full record— Lee, Harriet (1757/8-1851)
Date: 1788
"Since there is no convexity in MIND, / Why are thy genial beams to parts confined?"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1788
"Whene'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes, / Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise; / I see, by more than Fancy's mirror shewn, / The burning village, and the blazing town."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)