Date: 1774

"Were it necessary to produce instances of a fruitful imagination unproductive of true genius, we might find enough among those pretenders to poetry, who can, through many lines, run from one shining image to another, and finish many harmonious periods, without any sentiment or design; or among t...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"When a vegetable draws in moisture from the earth, nature, by the same action by which it draws it in, and at the same time, converts it to the nourishment of the plant: it at once circulates through its vessels, and is assimilated to its several parts. In like manner, genius arranges its ideas ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reaso...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)