Date: 1733-4

"For Wit's false mirror held up Nature's light"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734 [1735?]

"Customs or Int'rests govern all Mankind, / Some Biass cleaves to the unguarded Mind; / Thro' this, as in a false or flatt'ring Glass / Things seem to change their Natures as they pass."

— Paget, Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget (1689-1742)

Date: 1734

"Or Fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, / Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1735

"Still can my Soul in Fancy's Mirrour view / Deeds glorious once."

— Somervile, William (1675-1742)

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)