Date: 1709, 1810
"I've a mighty part within / That the world hath never seen, / Rich as Eden's happy ground, / And with choicer plenty crown'd: / Here on all the shining boughs / Knowledge fair and useful grows; / On the same young flow'ry tree / All the seasons you may see; / Notions in the bloom of light, / Jus...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: w. c. 1709, 1711
"Yet if we look more closely, we shall find / Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind: / Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light; / The lines, tho' touch'd but faintly, are drawn right."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1735
"Thro' the dark Void ev'n gleams of Truth can shoot, / And love of Liberty upheave at root."
preview | full record— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)
Date: 1737
"When the luxuriant Ardour of his Youth / Succeeding Years had tam'd to better Growth, / And seem'd to break the Body's Crust away, / To give th'expanded Mind more Room to play; / Which, in its Evening, open'd on the Sight / Surprizing Beams of full Meridian Light, / As thrifty of its Splendor it...
preview | full record— Hughes, Jabez (1685-1731)
Date: 1743
"Love still nourishes [the heart] with a temperate Heat, as the Sun doth our Climate; and Beauties rise after Beauties in the one, just as Fruits do in the other"
preview | full record— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)
Date: 1743
"I'll range the plenteous intellectual field; / And gather every thought of sovereign power, / To chase the moral maladies of man; / Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies, / Though natives of this coarse penurious soil; / Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing, / Refined, exalte...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Nor only by the warmth / And soothing sunshine of delightful things, / Do minds grow up and flourish."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1745
"Soon as his Breast receiv'd the potent Ray, / Whate'er possest it, instantly gave way; / As in the Wood before the Lightning's Beam, / Perish the Leaves, and the whole Tree is Flame."
preview | full record— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)
Date: November 10, 1750
"Is it that a long commerce with the world does indeed corrupt the heart; and extinguish by degrees those sparks of light, those inclinations to good, which were implanted in our minds?"
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750
"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)