Date: 1653

"Our fancies which in verse or prose we put, / May pictures be, which they do draw or cut."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1681

"That, for all furniture, you'l find / Only your Picture in my Mind."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1681

"For thou alone to people me, / Art grown a num'rous Colony; / And a Collection choicer far / Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1691

"How haps it then, Ideas stay behind, / And, when We please, can paint anew the Mind, / When what created them is fled, like Wind?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1712

"When Man with Reason dignify'd is born, / No Images his naked Mind adorn: / No Sciences or Arts enrich his Brain, / Nor Fancy yet displays her pictur'd Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1712

"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"Thou see'st from whence her Colours Fancy takes, / Of what Materials she her Pencil makes / By which she paints her Scenes with such Applause, / And in the Brain ten thousand Landskips draws."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1736, 1743

"Th' identick Shape thy Fancy would retain, / Engraven in eternal Characters / While Memory holds its Empire in the Brain."

— Wesley, Samuel, the Younger (1691-1739)

Date: 1767, 1784

"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1792

"They bade retentive memory on their mind / Impress each image, in distinctive lines / That mock'd erasure."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)