Date: 1774
"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1775
An "unquenchable" spark may glow within the breast and blaze into freedom
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1776-1789
"The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated."
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1776-1789
"The casual disputes that so frequently happened in their tumultuous parties of hunting or drinking were sufficient to inflame the minds of whole nations"
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
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)