Date: 1784
"'Tis in Clarinda's charming mind, / The sweet attraction lies; / There all that fire and life we find, / That sparkles in her eyes."
preview | full record— Fenn [née Frere], Ellenor (1744-1813)
Date: 1785
"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1785
The "love of Nature's works" "is a flame that dies not even there / Where nothing feeds it"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1785
"It were to be wished, therefore, that every part of a liturgy were personally applicable to every individual in the congregation; and that nothing were introduced to interrupt the passion, or damp the flame, which it is not easy to rekindle."
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1785
"Behold the man a firmer bond requires, / For him the passion kindles all its fires."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1785
"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: 1786
"You confound their abilities by the severity of their servitude: for as a spark of fire, if crushed by too great a weight of incumbent fuel, cannot be blown into a flame, but suddenly expires, so the human mind, if depressed by rigorous servitude, cannot be excited to a display of those facultie...
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1786
"'Remember,' concluded he, 'that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.'"
preview | full record— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)
Date: 1786
"If at this recital his indignation should arise, let him consider it as the genuine production of nature; that she recoiled at the horrid thought, and that she applied instantly a torch to his breast to kindle his resentment."
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: w. 1782, 1786, 1816
"Till then I am in torments, ineffable torments! an unrelenting fire preys on my heart."
preview | full record— Beckford, William (1760-1844)