Date: 1755, 1771

"In every human breast there lives enshrined / Some atom pregnant with the' etherial mind; / Some plastic power, some intellectual ray, / Some genial sunbeam from the source of day; / Something that, warm and restless to aspire, / Works the young heart, and sets the soul on fire, / And bids us al...

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"Strong and more strong the light celestial shines, / Each thought ennobles, and each sense refines, / Till all the soul, full opening to the flame, / Exalts to virtue what she felt for fame."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1772, 1810

"His vital spark her earthly cell forsook, / And into air her fleeting progress took."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1773

"Yet of etherial temper are their souls, / And in their veins the tide of honour rolls; / And valour kindles there the hero's flame, / Contempt of death, and thirst of martial flame. / And pity melts the sympathizing breast, / Ah! fatal virtue!—for the brave distrest."

— Day, Thomas (1748-1789)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The mind, or genius has been compared to a spark of fire, which is smothered by a heap of fewel, and prevented from blazing into a flame: This simile which is made use of, by the younger Pliny, may be easily mistaken for argument or proof."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"There is no danger of the mind's being over-burthened with knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on the contrary, these acquisitions may be as well, perhaps better, be compared, if comparisons signified any thing in reasoning, to the supply of living embers, which will...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"Our hearts frequently warmed in this manner, by the contact of those whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly catch something of their way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own bosoms some radiation at least of their fire and splendour."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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."

— 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<...