Date: 1700, 1702
"O could I think that he had ever known / My hidden flame, shame and confusion / Would force my Virgin soul to leave her mansion, / And certain Death ensue."
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: 1710, 1734
"They indeed, who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and corruptible as the body, since there is nothing more easily dissipated than such a being, which it is naturally impossible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle, wherein it...
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: w 1710, 1720
"Whilst like the Lamp's last Flame, their trembling Souls / Are on the Wing to leave their mortal Goals."
preview | full record— Ramsay, Allan (1684-1758)
Date: 1742
"Speech ventilates our intellectual fire; / Speech burnishes our mental magazine, / Brightens for ornament, and whets for use."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1745
"Imagination is the Paphian shop, / Where feeble Happiness, like Vulcan, lame, / Bids foul Ideas, in their dark recess, / And hot as hell, (which kindled the black fires,) / With wanton art, those fatal arrows form / Which murder all thy time, health, wealth, and fame."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1756
"Oh, God of Sleep! arise, and spread / Thy healing vapours round my head; / To thy friendly mansions take, / My soul that burns, / Till he returns, / For whom alone I wish to wake."
preview | full record— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)
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: 1772, 1810
"His vital spark her earthly cell forsook, / And into air her fleeting progress took."
preview | full record— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)