Date: 1730

"As thus we talk'd, / Our hearts would burn within us, would inhale / That portion of divinity, that ray / Of purest Heaven, which lights the glorious flame / Of patriots, and of heroes."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"But if doom'd, / In powerless humble fortune, to repress / These ardent risings of the kindling soul; / Then, even superior to ambition, we / Would learn the private virtues."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes!/ Inflames imagination; through the breast / Infuses every tenderness; and far / Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1731

Say "How Fancy ev'ry Shape puts on, / How kindling Sparks her Form compose, / And whence that ever shining Train / That Memory or Experience shows."

— Travers, H. (f. 1730)

Date: 1732

"Thus from your eyes united beams conspire, / To kindle in our souls a pleasing fire;"

— Dodsley, Robert (1703-1764)

Date: 1733

"[S]prightly Wit, that all admire," may be "an unlicens'd lawless Fire"

— Chandler, Mary (1687-1745)

Date: 1735, 1745

"And Fancy's Fire with Judgment's Temper cools."

— Trapp, Joseph (1679-1747)

Date: 1735, 1763

"Does mean self-love contract each social aim? / Here publick transports shall thy soul inflame."

— Melmoth, William, the younger (bap. 1710, d. 1799)

Date: 1735-6

"He, too, the fire of fancy feeds intense, / With all the train of passions thence derived: / Not kindling quick, a noisy transient blaze, / But gradual, silent, lasting, and profound."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)