Date: 1754

"But in this we are much kinder to our sense than to our intellect; for in order to assist the former we use glasses and spectacles of all kinds adapted to our deficiency of sight, whereas in the latter we are so far from accepting the assistance of mental glasses or spectacles, that we often str...

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

Date: 1754

"The poet who writes to the mind's eye, and collects his images through the same medium, lies under a great disadvantage in comparison with the painter"

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

Date: 1754

"The original, from whence [a painter] draws his copy, is an outward object, and his picture, when finish'd, is address'd to the visual sense: whereas the original, from whence the [poet] takes copy, is perceived by the mind's eye, and address'd also to the mental perception of his reader."

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

Date: 1754

"If invention then be only a capacity of finding, and not of creating, we must endeavour (if we would exercise this faculty) to to keep our mind's eye open, and on the search, and not close it up by bending all our thoughts on the gratification of some present humour"

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

Date: 1754

"I should be ashamed of myself, if I would not acknowledge the merit of Ben Johnson as a writer; but a capacity for writing holds so very low a place in my esteem, when weigh'd in the balance with an honest heart, that with me (and I wish it was the same with every other human creature) it...

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

Date: 1754

"Solitude now was all he sought, and dismissing his Companions, on Pretence of private Business, he retired to his Chamber to indulge his new Meditations, there making a Mirror of his Mind, he contemplated the Image of the beauteous Cressida; his raptured Fancy dwelt upon the inchanting Look she ...

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"In the mean time Cressida, whose Violence of Grief had long ago subsided, and left only a gentle Sensibility in her Soul, that but disposed it for new Impressions, having found some Difficulty in prosecuting her Design of returning to Troy on the appointed Day, resolved to lay aside all Thoughts...

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"Thus my Conscience being tossed in the Waves of a scrupulous Mind, and partly Despair to have any other Issue than I had already by this Lady now my Wife, it behoved me further to consider the State of this Realm, and the Danger it stood in for lack of a Prince to succeed me."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"I thought it good, in Release of the weighty Burthen of my weak Conscience, and also the quiet Estate of this worthy Realm, to attempt the Law therein, whether I may lawfully take another Wife, by whom God may send me more Issue, in case this my first Copulation was not good, without any carnal ...

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have tho...

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