Date: 1711

"True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, / What oft' was thought, but ne'er so well express'd; / Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, / That gives us back the image of our mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1712

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

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715

"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: March 13, 1727

"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1722

"O! what a felicity is it to Mankind, said I, to myself, that they cannot see into the Hearts of one another!"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1704

"As thro' the Artist's intervening Glass, / Our Eye observes the distant Planets pass; / A little we discover; but allow, / That more remains unseen, than Art can show: / So whilst our Mind it's Knowledge wou'd improve; / (It's feeble Eye intent on Things above) / High as We may, We lift our Rea...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1735

"He seemed therefore confident, that instead of Reason, we were only possessed of some Quality fitted to increase our natural Vices; as the Reflection from a troubled Stream returns the Image of an ill-shapen Body, not only larger, but more distorted."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)