Date: 1785

"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"He that attends to his interior self, [...] Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve / No unimportant, though a silent task."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"The stamp of artless piety impress'd / By kind tuition on his yielding breast"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

Vile example may be stamped on the breast

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: June, 1788

"Minds are never to be sold"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1788

"Our mind's unhelm'd, our attributes decay--"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"So poignant a mind in a vulgariz'd shell,/ Resembles a bucket of gold in a well; / 'Tis like Ceylon's best spice in a rude-fashion'd jar, / Or Comedy coop'd in a Dutch man of war."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

A mind may be like "clear amber, conden'd by stagnation," it may exhibit "the dirt it imbib'd in formation"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"The Muses, tho' coy to the rest of mankind, / Ran jocund to light the vast caves of [Shakespeare's] mind"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1789?

" 'Tis thine to sprinkle manna o'er the mind"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)