Date: 1704

"As thro' the Artist's intervening Glass, / Our Eye observes the distant Planets pass; / A little we discover; but allow, / That more remains unseen, than Art can show: / So whilst our Mind it's Knowledge wou'd improve; / (It's feeble Eye intent on Things above) / High as We may, We lift our Rea...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, / What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest; / Something, whose Truth convinc'd at Sight we find, / That gives us back the Image of our Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. 1703, 1712

"The clear, reflecting Mind, presents his Sin / In frightful Views, and makes it Day within."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"There is [a Comparison] of great Beauty in Virgil, upon a Subject very like this, where he compares his Hero's Mind, agitated with a great Variety and quick Succession of Thoughts, to a dancing Light reflected from a Vessel of Water in Motion."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"For Wit's false mirror held up Nature's light"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"Or Fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, / Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1907

"'I see a Horse, I'm sure thats true.' / I say the Devil a Horse see You; / You see a Horse's Image, lain / In Miniature upon your brain; / But what you take for fourteen hand, / Is less than half a grain of sand."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)