Date: 1745
"A race fantastick, in whose page you see / Untutor'd fancy, a meer Jeu d'Esprit: / Wit's shatter'd mirror lies in fragments bright, / Reflects not nature, but confounds the sight."
preview | full record— Brown, John (1715-1766)
Date: 1747
"Now the Purpose for which [Lestrange] principally intended his Book, as in his Preface he spends a great many Words to inform us, was for the Use and Instruction of Children; who being, as it were, a mere rasa tabula, or blank Paper, are ready indifferently for any Opinion, good or bad, taking a...
preview | full record— Croxall, Samuel (1688/9-1752); Aesop
Date: 1747
"What sort of Children therefore are the Blank Paper, upon which such Morality as this ought to be written?"
preview | full record— Croxall, Samuel (1688/9-1752); Aesop
Date: 1747
"Let the Children of Italy, France, Spain, and the rest of the Popish Countries, furnish him with Blank Paper for Principles, of which free-born Britons are not capable."
preview | full record— Croxall, Samuel (1688/9-1752); Aesop
Date: 1747
Johnson's dictionary may "awaken to the care of purer diction some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of style, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with sand."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1749
Nature "corresponding with her sweet assailant," may invade "in the heart of [a woman's] capital," and carry it by storm, while she lays "at the mercy of the proud conqueror, who had made his entry triumphantly, and completely"
preview | full record— Cleland, John (bap. 1710, d. 1789)
Date: 1749
One may give and take "with a gust inexpressible, a kiss of welcome, that my heart rising to my lips, stamp'd with its warmest impression"
preview | full record— Cleland, John (bap. 1710, d. 1789)
Date: 1749
"but to me they [natural impressions of surprize and admiration] sensibly prov'd the power and full dominion of the sole passion of my heart over me, a passion in which soul and body were concenter'd, and left me no room for any other relish of life but love"
preview | full record— Cleland, John (bap. 1710, d. 1789)
Date: 1749
"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1749
Charles XII of Sweden has "A Frame of Adamant, a Soul of Fire, / No Dangers fright him, and no Labours tire."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)