Date: 1754
"I may with the same Naïvité remove the Veil from my mental as well as personal Imperfections; and expose them naked to the World."
preview | full record— Hay, William (1695-1755)
Date: 1758
"Let inward beauty charm the mental sight; / Let godlike Reason, beaming bright, / Chase far away each gloomy shade, / Till VIRTUE's heav'nly form display'd / Alone shall captivate my soul, / And her divinest love possess me whole!"
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1758
"They who have a good Constitution of Body, support Heats and Colds: and so they, who have a right Constitution of Soul, bear [the Attacks of] Anger, and Grief, and immoderate Joy, and the other Passions."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1759
"But why are Originals so few? not because the Writer's harvest is over, the great Reapers of Antiquity having left nothing to be gleaned after them; nor because the human mind's teeming time is past, or because it is incapable of putting forth unprecedented births."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1762, 1781
"Bear back, false Winchester, thy proffer'd Bliss, / Weigh Crowns and Kingdoms with a deed like this, / Far, far too light in Wisdom's eye they seem, / Nor shake the scale, while Reason holds the beam."
preview | full record— Keate, George (1729-1797)
Date: 1763, 1770
"Yes, doubtless, steel'd--but still he show'd a heart, / As soft, as Cleopatra's softest part."
preview | full record— Thompson, Edward (1738-1786)
Date: 1770
"Excursive thought" may "Stand still a moment, and by reason taught / Judge rightly, with strict eye thyself survey"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: 1777, 1780
"He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed."
preview | full record— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)
Date: 1784
"Ah! season of delight!--could aught be found / To soothe awhile the tortur'd bosom's pain, / Of Sorrow's rankling shaft to cure the wound, / And bring life's first delusions once again, / 'Twere surely met in thee!."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)