Date: December 10, 1776; 1777
"But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1777, 1810
"While thus he ranges unconfined, / And glory fires his ardent mind."
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: 1781
"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1782
"In life's first season, when the fever's flame / Shrunk to deformity his shrivell'd frame, / And turn'd each fairer image in his brain / To blank confusion and her crazy train."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"Laughs not the spirit of poetic frame, / However slightly warm'd by Fancy's flame, / When grave Bossu by System's studied laws / The Grecian Bard's ideal picture draws"
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"The noble thought, that fir'd a Grecian soul, / Keeps o'er a British mind its firm control."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"Fanatic frenzy" is "the false fire of an o'erheated mind"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
The "love of Nature's works" "is a flame that dies not even there / Where nothing feeds it"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
"It were to be wished, therefore, that every part of a liturgy were personally applicable to every individual in the congregation; and that nothing were introduced to interrupt the passion, or damp the flame, which it is not easy to rekindle."
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1785
"Behold the man a firmer bond requires, / For him the passion kindles all its fires."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)