Date: 1757
"Behold, thro' fancy's mirrour, what a scene / The phantom opens, ample, wide, and fair, / Each golden minute, bearing as it flies / Imaginary raptures on its wing; / Flatt'ring my fond deluded heart with dreams / Of lasting pleasure--but alas, how soon / This fairy Eden to a waste is turn'd?"
preview | full record— Hervey, James (1714-1758)
Date: 1759
"A Genius implies the rays of the mind concenter'd, and determined to some particular point; when they are scatter'd widely, they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force, to fire, or dissolve, the heart."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1753, 1759, 1770
"But still in Fancy's mirror sees / Some more romantic scene would please, / There within a nook most dark, / Where none my musing mood may mark, / Let me, in many a whisper'd rite, / The Genius old of Greece invite, / With that fair wreath my brows to bind, / Which for his chosen imps he twin'd,...
preview | full record— Warton, Thomas, the younger (1728-1790)
Date: 1763
"A far-stretch'd mirror spreads: its Bosom shews / Th'inverted prospect, circled in with hills / And cliffs, a Theatre immense!"
preview | full record— Keate, George (1729-1797)
Date: 1763
"No--'tis the tale which angry Conscience tells, / When She with more than tragic horror swells / Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true, / She brings bad actions forth into review; / And, like the dread hand-writing on the wall, / Bids late Remorse awake at Reason's call, / Arm'd at al...
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1766
"In judgment's sunshine fancy's flow'rets bloom, / And innocence exalts their fresh perfume: / No weeds of envy choke the fertile soil"
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1766
"She, whose bright presence, dull December's day / Might metamorphose into sprightly May; / Whose virtuous manners, and whose polish'd mind, / May stand the test and mirror of mankind."
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1767, 1784
"So, when on some weighty truth / A beam of heav'nly light its lustre sheds, / To Reason's eye it looks supremely fair."
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1767, 1784
"The curious structure of these visual orbs, / The windows of the mind; substance how clear, / Aqueous, or crystalline! through which the soul, / As thro' a glass, all outward things surveys."
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1768
The blind may be given the "better graces of the mind," such as "Genius, and Learning's Thews, and Judgement's light"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)