Date: 1728

"Then infant Reason grows apace, and calls / For the kind Hand of an assiduous Care: / Delightful Task! to rear the tender Thought, / To teach the young Idea how to shoot, / To pour the fresh Instruction o'er the Mind, / To breathe th' inspiring Spirit, and to plant / The generous Purpose in...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Call now to mind what high capacious powers / Lie folded up in man; how far beyond / The praise of mortals, may the eternal growth / Of nature to perfection half divine, / Expand the blooming soul?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"What pity then / Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth / Her [the soul's] tender blossom; choak the streams of life, / And blast her spring!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"For such the bounteous providence of heaven, / In every breast implanting this desire / Of objects new and strange, to urge us on / With unremitted labour to pursue / Those sacred stores that wait the ripening soul, / In Truth's exhaustless bosom."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"For such the bounteous providence of heaven, / In every breast implanting this desire / Of objects new and strange, to urge us on / With unremitted labour to pursue / Those sacred stores that wait the ripening soul, / In Truths exhaustless bosom."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Her the sire / Gave it in charge to rear the blooming mind, / The folded powers to open, to direct / The growth luxuriant of his young desires, / And from the laws of this majestic world / To teach him what was good."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Nor only by the warmth / And soothing sunshine of delightful things, / Do minds grow up and flourish."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"More faithful keeps the graver's lively trace, / Than he whose birth the sister powers of art / Propitious view'd, and from his genial star / Shed influence to the seeds of fancy kind; / Than his attemper'd bosom must preserve / The seal of nature."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Hitherto the stores, / Which feed thy mind and exercise her powers, / Partake the relish of their native soil, / Their parent earth."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"He says that, tho' he were not nobly born, / Nature has form'd him noble, generous, brave, / Truely magnanimous, and warmly scorning / Whatever bears the smallest Taint of Baseness: / That every easy Virtue is his own; / Not learnt by painful Labour, but inspir'd, / Implanted in his Soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)