Date: 1735-6

"His mental eye first launch'd into the deeps of boundless ether; where unnumber'd orbs, / Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky / Unerring roll, and wind their steady way."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1744, 1746

"That with the vivid energy of sense, / The truth of Nature, which with Attic point / And kind well temper'd satire, smoothly keen, / Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"My fluttering Soul was all on Wing to find Thee, / My Love! my Sigismunda!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"But This, my Friend, these stormy Gusts of Pride / Are foreign to my Love--Till Sigismunda / Be disabus'd, my Breast is Tumult all, / And can obey no settled Course of Reason. / I see Her still, I feel her powerful Image!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Thought drives on Thought, on Passions Passions roll; / Her Smiles alone can calm my raging Soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Wild as Winds, / And fighting Seas, he raves. His Passions mix, / With ceaseless Rage, all in each giddy Moment."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"Now, while I taste the Sweetness of the Shade, / While Nature lies around deep-lull'd in Noon, / Now come, bold Fancy, spread a daring Flight, / And view the Wonders of the torrid Zone."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"He framed a melting lay, to try her heart; / And, if an infant passion struggled there, / To call that passion forth."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"While there with thee the enchanted round I walk, / The regulated wild, gay Fancy then / Will tread in thought the groves of attic land; / Will from thy standard taste refine her own, / Correct her pencil to the purest truth / Of Nature, or, the unimpassion'd shades / Forsaking, raise it to the ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1754

"Our simple ideas fade in the mind, or fleet out of it, unless they are frequently renewed: and the most tenacious memory cannot maintain such as are very complex, without the greatest attention, and a constant care, nor always with both."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)