Date: 1779, 1781

"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Still, however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope and all the wonders which the telescope discovers"

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Whatever be his subject he never fails to fill the imagination."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"Those mental stores shall cheer the wintery hours, / And flowers unfading breathe their sweets at home.// Extracting food amid the vernal bloom, / So flies the industrious bee around the vale, / With native skill she forms the waxen comb, / To keep for wintery days the rich regale."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1781

"How solidly he establishes, in Opposition to the celebrated Mr. Locke, the Doctrine of Innate Ideas; or that the Soul of Man, is not in its first created State, a mere Rasa Tabula, or blank Paper, but full of divine Sensations, and the Powers, Riches and Glories of Eternity; all treasured up and...

— Anonymous; [L--]

Date: 1782

"Cecilia was wholly unable to devise any answer to these effusions of contempt and anger; and therefore his harangue lasted without interruption, till he had exhausted all his subjects of complaint, and emptied his mind of ill-will."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"He must, upon no account, sustain a conversation with any spirit, lest he should appear, to his utter disgrace, interested in what is said: and when he is quite tired of his existence, from a total vacuity of ideas, he must affect a look of absence, and pretend, on the sudden, to be wholly lost ...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"In the midst of this jargon, to which the fulness of Cecilia's mind hardly permitted her to listen, there suddenly appeared at the door of the apartment, Mr. Albany, who, with his usual austerity of countenance, stopt to look round upon the company."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)