Date: 1726 [editions in 1727, 1728, 1730, 1744, 1746]

"Wide-stretching from these shores, / A people savage from remotest time, / A huge neglected empire, one vast mind, / By Heaven inspired, from gothic darkness call'd."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1726 [editions in 1727, 1728, 1730, 1744, 1746]

"That wit ...which with Attic point And kind well-tempered satire, smoothly keen, Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"E'en Light itself, which every thing displays, / Shone undiscover'd, till [Newton's] brighter mind / Untwisted all the shining robe of day."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728, 1730, 1744, 1746

It is a delightful task "to rear the tender thought, / To teach the young idea how to shoot"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

Clear-sighted judgment sits in the mind and surveys the "chain of reason"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

Fancy lives in the mind

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

Social love "plays the passions with a tender hand"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"Now, while my thought round nature's circle runs / (A bolder journey than the furious sun's) / This chief and satiating good to find / The attracting centre of the human mind"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"Oh, let not the soft, penetrating plague / Creep on the freeborn mind! and working there, / With the sharp tooth of many a new-form'd want, / Endless, and idle all, eat out the heart / Of liberty; the high conception blast; / The noble sentiment, the impatient scorn / Of base subjection, and the...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"Induced at last, by scarce perceived degrees, / Sapping the very frame of government, / And life, a total dissolution comes; / Sloth, ignorance, dejection, flattery, fear."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)