Date: 1719
"Than from this Mind, O! venerable Shade, / Th'Impression be eras'd thy Words have made."
preview | full record— Breval, John Durant (1680/81-1738)
Date: 1726
"How the weak Mind a naked Blank, receives, / The first Impression Time, or Custom gives."
preview | full record— Johnson, Charles (1679?-1748)
Date: 1730
"The former of these, our Free-thinkers, out of their singular wisdom, and benevolence to makind, endeavour to erase from the minds of men."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1742 [see first edition, 1733]
"The Mind, like a Tabula rasa, easyly receives the first Impression; and, like that, when the first Impression is deeply made, it with Difficulty admits of an Erasement of the first Characters, which in some Minds are indelible"
preview | full record— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)
Date: February 1738
One may be " In State most desponding, by the Light of a Taper, / With Thoughts dull and dark as my Wax, or my Paper"
preview | full record— Tickell, Thomas (1685-1740)
Date: 1741, 1742, 1755
"For it was Aristotle's opinion, who compared the soul to a 'rasa tabula', that human sensations and reflections were passions: These therefore are what he finely calls, the 'passive intelligent'; which, he says, shall cease, or is corruptible."
preview | full record— Warburton, William (1698-1779)