Date: 1771, 1776

"'Could History man's secret heart reveal, / 'And what imports a heaven-born mind to learn, / 'Her transcripts to explore what bosom would not yearn!"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'Fancy enervates, while it sooths, the heart, / 'And, while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight: / 'To joy each heightening charm it can impart, / 'But wraps the hour of wo in tenfold night."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The gloomy race / 'By Indolence and moping Fancy bred, / 'Fear, Discontent, Solicitude give place, / 'And Hope and Courage brighten in their stead, / 'While on the kindling soul her vital beams are shed."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Fancy now no more / Wantons on fickle pinion through the skies; / But, fix'd in aim, and conscious of her power, / Sublime from cause to cause exults to rise, / Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"But She, who set on fire his infant heart, / And all his dreams, and all his wanderings shared / And bless'd, the Muse, and her celestial art, / Still claim th' Enthusiast's fond and first regard."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Adieu, ye lays, that fancy's flowers adorn, / The soft amusement of the vacant mind!"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"Like a mirrour, it [memory] reflects faithful images of the objects formerly perceived by us, but can exhibit no form with which it is not in this manner supplied. It is in its nature a mere copier; it preserves scrupulously the very position and arrangement of the original sensations, and gives...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)