Date: 1743, 1745
"From the court-mint, of hearts the current coin / The pulpit presses, but the pattern drives."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1748, 1754
"The sensible Beauty, or Good, is refined from its Dross by partaking of the Moral, and the Moral receives a Stamp, a visible Character and Currency from the Sensible."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: w. 1740, 1748
"The flannel Crew / With cunning joy the fond repentance view, / Pronounce Him bless'd, his miracles proclaim, / Teach the slight croud t' adore his hallow'd name, / Exalt his praise above the Saints of old, / And coin his sinking conscience into Gold."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750
"It ought, therefore, to be the care of those who wish to pass the last hours with comfort, to lay up such a treasure of pleasing ideas, as shall support the expenses of that time, which is to depend wholly upon the fund already acquired."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1751
"The captain had a fund of great goodnature in his heart, but was somewhat too much addicted to passion, and frequently apt to resent without a cause, but when once convinced he had been in the wrong, no one could be more ready to acknowlege and ask pardon for his mistake."
preview | full record— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)
Date: 1752, performed 1772
"I flatter'd my poor soul that all its Fears / Were Grief's distemper'd coinage, that my Love / Rais'd causeless apprehensions, and at length / Edgar would quite forgive."
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
Date: 1752
"'But you understand Human Nature to the Bottom,' answered Amelia;' and your Mind is a Treasury of all ancient and modern Learning.'"
preview | full record— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)
Date: January 28, 1753
"I have heard that his understanding was rather hurt by the absolute retirement in which he lived, and indeed he had an imagination too lively to be trusted to itself; the treasures of it were inexhaustible, but for want of commerce with mankind he made that rich oar into bright but useless medal...
preview | full record— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)
Date: 1753
"Tho' this letter was somewhat shorter than those she usually wrote to him, yet the few lines it contain'd discovered, without her designing to do so, such a well establish'd fund of tenderness in her soul, as cannot but be discernable to every understanding reader."
preview | full record— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)
Date: 1753
"This new domestic, whose name was Maurice, underwent, with great applause, the examination of our hero, who perceived in him, a fund of sagacity and presence of mind, by which he was excellently qualified for being the valet of an adventurer; he was therefore accommodated with a second hand suit...
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)