Date: 1728

"BUT yonder breathing Prospect bids the Muse / Throw all her Beauty forth, that Daubing all / Will be to what I gaze; for who can paint / Like Nature? Can Imagination boast / Amid his gay Creation Hues like Her's? / And can He mix them with that matchless Skill, / And lay them on so delicately sw...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

Exhausted Nature sinks a-while to Rest, / Still interrupted by disorder'd Dreams, / That o'er the sick Imagination rise, / And in black Colours paint the mimic Scene."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"By whose fair Pencil is each Image wrought, / That teems to Birth, and burnishes to Thought?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1735

"The Thinking Faculty, its source, its pow'rs: / How, stretch'd like Kneller's canvas first it lies / 'Ere the soft tints awake, or outlines rise / How, till the Finishing of thrice sev'n years, / The Master-Figure Reason scarce appears."

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1736, 1743

"Th' identick Shape thy Fancy would retain, / Engraven in eternal Characters / While Memory holds its Empire in the Brain."

— Wesley, Samuel, the Younger (1691-1739)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1738

"The studious Eye, that runs [William's] Labours o'er, / Shall print his Image on the grateful Mind"

— Boyse, Samuel (1708-1749)

Date: 1744

"Nor dreadful our transition; though the mind, / An artist at creating self-alarms, / Rich in expedients for inquietude, / Is prone to paint it dreadful."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Death, and his image rising in the brain, / Bear faint resemblance; never are alike: / Fear shakes the pencil; Fancy loves excess; / Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades: And these the formidable picture draw."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)