Date: 1666

"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

Elocution is " that art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding word."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

"Slow as a Drug, that in the body lies, / Our Phansy works; yours, like a Spirit, flyes"

— Killigrew, Sir William (bap. 1606, d. 1695)

Date: 1666

"'Twill much oblige the Nation, for they'l finde / Your Play stampt with the Figure of your Minde;"

— Killigrew, Sir William (bap. 1606, d. 1695)

Date: 1667

"For, though Man's Soul, and Body are not onely one natural Engine (as some have thought) of whose motions of all sorts, there may be as certain an accompt given, as those of a Watch or a Clock"

— Sprat, Thomas (bap. 1635, d. 1713)

Date: 1667

"But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly receiv...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"'Tis so wild [Wildblood's heart], that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1660, 1668

"Have you not seen an early-rising Lark / Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark, / Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher, / Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire? / Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice / His Soul become a Bird of Paradise."

— Wild, Robert (1615/16-1679)