Date: 1736

"Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any more; nor consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them, that what we may h...

— Butler, Joseph (1692-1752)

Date: 1737 (also 1738, 1743, reprinted 1754)

"Fain would he see some distant scene / Suggested by his restless spleen, / And fancy's telescope applies / With tinctur'd glass to cheat his eyes."

— Green, Matthew (1696-1737)

Date: 1737, 1743

"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Not so the moral species, nor the powers / Of genius and design; the ambitious mind / There sees herself: by these congenial forms / Touch'd and awaken'd, with intenser act / She bends each nerve, and meditates well-pleas'd / Her features in the mirror."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thus he learns / Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt / The avenues of sense; what laws direct / Their union; and what various discords rise, / Or fix'd or casual: which when his clear thought / Retains and when his faithful words express, / That living image of the external scene, / ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"A race fantastick, in whose page you see / Untutor'd fancy, a meer Jeu d'Esprit: / Wit's shatter'd mirror lies in fragments bright, / Reflects not nature, but confounds the sight."

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: w. 1740, 1748

"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1749

"Which, among other Things, may serve as a Comment on that Saying of Æschines, that Drunkenness shews the Mind of a Man, as a Mirror reflects his Person."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1750, 1770

"And, Morpheus, thus may thy mild Lethéan powers, / For ever hovering round my midnight hours, / Thro' Fancy's mirror wrap me in idéal joy."

— Hamilton, William Gerard (1729-1796)

Date: 1751

"There are few among Mankind, who have not been often struck with Admiration at the Sight of that Variety of Colours and Magnificence of Form, which appear in an Evening Rainbow. The uninstructed in Philosophy consider that splendid Object, not as dependent on any other, but as being possessed of...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)