Date: 1711
"Fierce is their [natives of hot climates] Rage, and all the Savage Beast / Reigns in their Soul, and haunts their desart Breast; / Where Hate, Revenge, and Jealousy are bred, / And livid Envy hides her spleenful Head."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1719
"My soul is like a wilderness, / Where beasts of midnight howl; / There the sad raven finds her place, / And there the screaming owl."
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1724
"When all at once / A thousand anxious Thoughts that slept by Day, / Swarm'd in my Brain, 'till it resembled Hell, / Hot, dark and hot: my sick Imagination, / Assisted by the Shades of Night, would give / A gloomy turn to each Idea there."
preview | full record— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)
Date: 1759
"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1767
This ideal region is indeed the proper sphere of Fancy, in which she may range with a loose rein, without suffering restraint from the severe checks of Judgment; for Judgment has very little jurisdiction in this province of Fable."
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1774
"As acuteness of smell carries a dog along the path of the game for which he searches, and secures him against the danger of quitting it, upon another scent: so this happy structure of imagination leads the man of genius into those tracks where the proper ideas lurk, and not only enables him to d...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: April, 1783
"Let an Hypochondriack then have his park well stocked. Let him get as many agreeable ideas into his mind as he can; and though there may in wintery days seem: a total vacancy, yet when summer glows benignant, and the time of singing of birds is come, he will be delighted with gay colours and enc...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: February 2, 1796
"Her head's like the island, folks tell on, / Which nothing but monkies can dwell on"
preview | full record— Hoare, Prince (1755-1834)