Date: 1759
"Mankind's the same to Beasts and Fouls / That Devils are to Humane Soules, / Who therefor, when like Fiends th' appeare, / Avoyd and Fly with equal feare."
preview | full record— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)
Date: 1759
"But if an Original, by being as excellent, as new, adds admiration to surprize, then are we at the writer's mercy; on the strong wing of his imagination, we are snatched from Britain to Italy, from climate to climate, from pleasure to pleasure; we have no home, no thou...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1759
"How have thy Houyhnhunms thrown thy judgment from its seat, and laid thy imagination in the mire?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1759
"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1759
"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1759
"Their [pedants'] constant overstraining of the Mind / Distorts the Brain, as Horses break their Wind / Or rude Confusions of the Things they read / Get up, like noxious Vapours, in the Head, / Until they have their constant Wanes and Fulls, / And Changes in the Insides of their Skulls."
preview | full record— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)
Date: 1760?
The Grace teaches "When to check the sportive Vein; / When to Fancy give the Rein."
preview | full record— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)
Date: 1760, 1761
"Reason, collected in herself, disdains / The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"Whatever unto them is brought / Is carried on the wings of thought / Before his throne, where, in full state, / He on their merits holds debate, / Examines, cross-examines, weighs / Their right to censure or to praise."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)