Date: 1726, 1753

"As fire, by nature, climbs direct, and bright, / And beams, in spotless rays, a shining light; / But if some gross obstruction stops its way, / Smokes in low curls, and scents the sullied day: / So love, itself, untainted, and refin'd, / Borrows a tincture, from the colour'd mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1726, 1753

"Boundless desire, aw'd hope, and doubtful joy, / Stormy, by turns, the veering heart employ; / Sick'ning, in fancy's sun-shine, now, we faint, / And licence wounds us deeper, than restraint."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1728

"A Lover, when he is admitted to Cards, ought to be solemnly silent, and observe the Motions of his Mistress. He must laugh when she laughs, sigh when she sighs. In short, he shou'd be the Shadow of her Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1728

"From what rich Fountain flow / Those ripening Beams of intellectual Day?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1728

"How Reason's Lamp burns with incessant Toil, / To light the Judgment, and to guide the Will?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1730

"No light the darkness of that mind invades, / Where Chaos rules, enshrin'd in genuine Shades;"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

A "mimic gleam of transient light" may break through the gloom of dullness "and then they think they write"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

"Fancy, fair Mistress of the Poet's Mind, / For ever changing, yet, for ever kind; / Soft, o'er his Dreams, her formful Radiance shed, / And his rapt Soul thro' Heaven's thin Purlieus led; / Seated beside the Star-invading Dame, / Whose Steeds, Wind-footed, paw'd the lambent Flame, / High, as a W...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1731

"Wherefore though all Cogitations be formally in the Soul, and not in the Body, yet these sensitive Cogitations being in the Soul no otherwise than as vitally united to the Body, they are not so properly the Cogitations of the Soul, as of the mixed, or both together, as Plotinus calls it, the Com...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"In the day they [Phantasms] are shut out and disappear, the Senses and Understanding working, as the lesser Fire is made to disappear by the Greater; and small Griefs and Pleasures by Great ones. But when we are at rest in our Beds, the least Phantasms make Impressions upon us."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)