Date: 1697
"At such Reflections do's not Nature start, / And try at every Spring to touch your Heart? / Do's not soft Pity's fire begin to burn, / Do not your yearning Bowels in you turn? / In such a case Breasts arm'd with temper'd Steel / And Hearts of Marble, should impression feel."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1697
"What inward Whips my tortur'd Bowels tear? / Fierce Vipers twist their Spires about my Heart, / And Bite, and Sting, and Wound with deadly smart. / With more than Atlas weight my Soul's opprest, / And raging Tempests beat along my breast: / Corroding Flames eat thro' my burning veins, / And all ...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1711
"When Fancy makes superior Flight her Aim, / Wing'd with this vig'rous, clear seraphick Flame, / She ranges Nature's universal Frame; / Bright Seeds of Thought from various Objects takes, / Whence her fair Scenes and Images she makes: / Spirits so swift, so fine, so bold, so strong, / Gave Milton...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1758, 1781
"Alas! All Souls are subject to like Fate, / All sympathizing with the Body's State; / Let the fierce Fever burn thro' ev'ry Vein, / And drive the madding Fury to the Brain, / Nought can the Fervour of his Frenzy cool, / But Aristotle's self's a Parish Fool!"
preview | full record— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)
Date: January 27, 1759.
"That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1760-7
"What a conjuncture was here lost! ... my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;--his head like a smoak-jack;--the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!"
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1760-7
"As for my uncle Toby, his smoak-jack had not made a dozen revolutions, before he fell asleep also. "
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1760-7
"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1765
"And my heart, within me burning, / Is become like melting wax."
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Date: 1766
"Considering these words, in a religious sense; that of 'fervency', seems to rise upon 'warmth'; 'warmth' implying, a flame of devotion, in opposition to coolness; 'fervency', great heat of mind, as opposed to coldness."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)