Date: 1728

"Who in each other clasp whatever fair / High Fancy forms, and lavish Hearts can wish, / Something than Beauty dearer, should they look / Or on the Mind, or Mind-illumin'd Face, / Truth, Goodness, Honour, Harmony and Love, / The richest Bounty of indulgent Heaven."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Thus the glad Skies, / The wide-rejoycing Earth, the Woods, the Streams, / With every Life they hold, down to the Flower / That paints the lowly Vale, or Insect-Wing / Wav'd o'er the Shepherd's Slumber, touch the Mind / To Nature tun'd, with a light-flying Hand, / Invisible, quick-urging, thro' ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Ye Fairy Prospects then, / Ye Beds of Roses, and ye Bowers of Joy, / Farewell! Ye Gleamings of departing Peace, / Shine out your last! The yellow-tinging Plague / Internal Vision taints, and in a Night / Of livid Gloom Imagination wraps."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"A Lover, when he is admitted to Cards, ought to be solemnly silent, and observe the Motions of his Mistress. He must laugh when she laughs, sigh when she sighs. In short, he shou'd be the Shadow of her Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1728

"From what rich Fountain flow / Those ripening Beams of intellectual Day?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1728

"How Reason's Lamp burns with incessant Toil, / To light the Judgment, and to guide the Will?"

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1729

"Reason exerts her pure, celestial, Rays, / To guide our Steps thro' Errors weary Maze: / But upstart Passions mount her rightful Throne, / And blindly push our vanquish'd Judgment on."

— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)

Date: 1730

"No light the darkness of that mind invades, / Where Chaos rules, enshrin'd in genuine Shades;"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

A "mimic gleam of transient light" may break through the gloom of dullness "and then they think they write"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1730

"Whether we send our Reason's piercing Rays / Beneath the Great, unbounded Deep, / Where Storms and Tempests sleep, / Whether unrein'd Imagination strays / Thro' the black, Howling Desart's pathless Ways, / The Deep and Howling Wilderness declare / The Omnipresent Godhead there."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)