Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Fancy now no more / Wantons on fickle pinion through the skies; / But, fix'd in aim, and conscious of her power, / Sublime from cause to cause exults to rise, / Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"But She, who set on fire his infant heart, / And all his dreams, and all his wanderings shared / And bless'd, the Muse, and her celestial art, / Still claim th' Enthusiast's fond and first regard."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Adieu, ye lays, that fancy's flowers adorn, / The soft amusement of the vacant mind!"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"Like a mirrour, it [memory] reflects faithful images of the objects formerly perceived by us, but can exhibit no form with which it is not in this manner supplied. It is in its nature a mere copier; it preserves scrupulously the very position and arrangement of the original sensations, and gives...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Imagination is still more inventive in all its other operations. It can lead us from a perception that is present, to the view of many more, and carry us through extensive, distant, and untrodden fields of thought. It can dart in an instant, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth; it can...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"No sooner almost is a design formed, or the hint of a subject started, than all the ideas which are requisite for compleating it, rush into his view as if they were conjured up by the force of magic."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"These latter have only one tie, but the former have a double relation, and will therefore rush into the thoughts with double violence."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)