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: 1783
"The utmost we can expect is, that this fire of imagination should sometimes flash upon us like lightning from heaven, and then disappear."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1784
"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1785
In the heart, "by jarring tempests tost, / Truth, honour, reason, virtue all are lost"
preview | full record— Combe, William (1742 -1823)
Date: 1785
"Ere Gold appear'd the Passions took their course; / Like whirldwinds swept the flowers of life along, / And crush'd the weak, and undermin'd the strong."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1785
"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."
preview | full record— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)
Date: 1785
"I was delighted with this flash bursting from the cloud which hung upon his mind, closed my letter directly, and joined the company."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"Transient clouds darkened my imagination, and in those clouds I saw events from which I shrunk; but a sentence or two of the Rambler's conversation gave me firmness, and I considered that I was upon an expedition for which I had wished for years, and the recollection of which would be a treasure...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: w. 1782, 1786, 1816
"In the first ebullition of his fury, Vathek had resolved to rip open the body of Alboufaki and to stuff it with those of the negresses and of Carathis herself, but the remembrance of the Giaour, the palace of Istakar, the sabres, and the talismans, flashing before his imagination, with the simul...
preview | full record— Beckford, William (1760-1844)