Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)
"The power which the mind evidently has of moving the various parts of the body by nerves inserted in the muscles is truly wonderful, seeing the mind neither knows the muscles to be moved, nor the machinery, by which the motion in it is to be produced: so that it is as if a musician should always...
preview | full record— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)
Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)
"When actual thought is suspended, there may remain some secret power of thinking resulting from the constitution of the soul, which will exert itself when the obstruction is removed. As a bow when bent has a disposition to straiten itself again, or a clock to strike, though the hammer be held ba...
preview | full record— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)
Date: 1763
"After all, are we not a little in the machine style, not to be able to withdraw our love when our esteem is at an end?"
preview | full record— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)
Date: w. prior to April 1770; 1785, 1837, 1875
"The wise look further, and the wise can see / The hands of Sawney actuating thee; / The clock-work of thy conscience turns about, / Just as his mandates wind thee in and out."
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)
Date: 1772, 1788
"Roast Beef quantum suff. and take tantum Red Port, / They steel the main-spring of the Heart."
preview | full record— Stevens, George Alexander (1710?-1784)
Date: 1773, 1810
"The bard enjoys ethereal bliss to-day; / Bright are his thoughts, and vigorous is his lay: / To-morrow brings a melancholy scene; / Relaxed, untuned is all the fine machine;"
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: 1773
"Strong Passions draw, like Horses that are strong, / The Body-Coach of Flesh and Blood along; / While subtle Reason, with each Rein in Hand, / Sits on the Box, and has them at Command; / Rais'd up aloft, to see and to be seen, / Judges the Track, and guides the gay Machine."
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1773
"They who are loud in human Reason's Praise, / And celebrate the Drivers of our Days, / Seem to suppose, by their continual Bawl, / That Passions, Reason, and Machine, is all / To them the Windows are drawn up, and clear / Nothing that does not outwardly appear."
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1777
"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
Date: December 10, 1776; 1777
"To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude, that because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper what he...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)