Date: w. 1796, 1811

"Truths to describe, which clearly to explain / Reason's dim lamp has burnt for centuries in vain."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: w. 1796, 1811

"Hence the same Charity, heart-cheering guest, / That burnt, with fervent flame, in Dryden's breast, / Inspirits mine"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1811, 1812

In the "deep record of the Sibyl's leaves, / There no instruction the blank mind receives."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1811, 1812

"The soul, a cheering lamp, the scene illumes, / Fed with the splendour of ethereal rays, / And bright'ning still, as still the frame decays"

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1815

The mind may be indicated by looks

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1815

The wavering motions of the mind are like "quivering light" reflected off a confined "crystal flood" in a brass cistern

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1815

"You bid me write to amuse the tedious hours, / And save from withering my poetic powers; / Hard is the task, my friend, for verse should flow / From the free mind, not fetter'd down by woe."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: November 1824

"Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored ...

— Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800-1859)

Date: 1825

Beauty, elegance and grace may "beam transcendent" from an "angel mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1825

"Vulgar passions--meteors of a day"--"expire before the chilling blasts of age"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)