Date: 1779
"Fierce passions discompose the mind, as tempests vex the sea"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1782
"[A] sultry calm fails not to produce a storm, which dissipates the noxious vapours, and restores a purer air; the fiercest tempest, exhausted by its own violence, at length subsides; and an intense sun-shine, whilst it parches up the thirsty earth, exhales clouds, which quickly water it with ref...
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)
Date: 1782
Complacency may breath a gentle gail over the thoughts and swell an "easy sail"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1784
"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1785
In the heart, "by jarring tempests tost, / Truth, honour, reason, virtue all are lost"
preview | full record— Combe, William (1742 -1823)
Date: 1785
"Ere Gold appear'd the Passions took their course; / Like whirldwinds swept the flowers of life along, / And crush'd the weak, and undermin'd the strong."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1785
"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."
preview | full record— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)
Date: 1785
"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)