Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1775
An "unquenchable" spark may glow within the breast and blaze into freedom
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1776-1789
"The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated."
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1776-1789
"The casual disputes that so frequently happened in their tumultuous parties of hunting or drinking were sufficient to inflame the minds of whole nations"
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1776
"But who that has the least spark of imagination, sees not how languid the latter expression is, when compared with the former."
preview | full record— Campbell, George (1719-1796)
Date: December 10, 1776; 1777
"But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1777
"Her mind's a burning fire, / Where sudden thoughts, like wreaths of smoak arise, / And, parting from the flame, disperse in air."
preview | full record— Home, John (1722-1808)
Date: 1777, 1810
"While thus he ranges unconfined, / And glory fires his ardent mind."
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: w. 1755, 1777
"But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the same manner she does the other substance, matter."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)