Date: 1735-6

"In the soft plunder came that worst of plagues, / That pestilence of mind, a fever'd thirst / For the false joys which Luxury prepares."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

"See! the full board / That steams disgust, and bowls that give no joy; / No truth invited there, to feed the mind; / Nor wit, the wine-rejoicing reason quaffs."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

The young mind may be fed impurities and bloated with "scholastic jargon" or it may be "fill'd and nourish'd by the light of truth"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Bear Witness, Heaven! Thou Mind-inspecting Eye! / My Breast is pure."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"There let the classic Page thy fancy lead / Thro rural Scenes; such as the Mantuan Swain / Paints in the matchless Harmony of Song. / Or catch thyself the Landskip, gliding swift / Athwart Imagination's vivid Eye."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"When in the Hall of Smoke they congress hold, / And the sage berry, sun-burnt Mocha bears, / Has clear'd their inward eye: then, smoke-enroll'd, / Their oracles break forth mysterious as of old."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep / Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1748

"But here, instead, is foster'd every ill, / Which or distemper'd minds or bodies know."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: September 30, 1769

"A sage philosopher, to try / What pupil saw with reason's eye,"

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)