Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, / What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest; / Something, whose Truth convinc'd at Sight we find, / That gives us back the Image of our Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. 1703, 1712

"The clear, reflecting Mind, presents his Sin / In frightful Views, and makes it Day within."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"There is [a Comparison] of great Beauty in Virgil, upon a Subject very like this, where he compares his Hero's Mind, agitated with a great Variety and quick Succession of Thoughts, to a dancing Light reflected from a Vessel of Water in Motion."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

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

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

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

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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)