Date: 1712
"Can the dissecting Steel the Brain display, / And the august Apartment open lay, / Where this great Queen still chuses to reside / In Intellectual Pomp, and bright Ideal Pride? / Or can the Eye assisted by the Glass / Discern the strait, but hospitable Place, / In which ten thousand Images remai...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1723
"Thou know'st the secret Soul's imperial Throne / Surrounded with thick Darkness, like thy own, / Where she to all the Senses Audience gives, / Appoints their Tasks, their Messages receives, / And passes Judgement in her Sov'reign Court / On every Envoy's true or false Report / How her sole Nod...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750
"The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powerful to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1759
"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1762-3
"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1807
"Yes, 't is too late,--now Reason guides / The mind, sole judge in all debate."
preview | full record— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)