Date: 1770

"There were some passages in both your letters that plucked my very heart-strings"

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1773

"Smooth like her verse her passions learned to move, / And her whole soul was harmony and love."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1775

"[T]here may be a farther difference in the constitution of the nerves belonging to the different senses, or there may be so many circumstances that affect or modify their vibrations, that they may be as distinguishable from one another, as different human voices sounding the same note; and proba...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"The country, as the poets tell us, is the scene for love; the pleasing objects that surround us, the pureness of the air, but, above all, its stillness, harmonize the soul, and render it susceptible of every soft and tender feeling."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"When Mrs. Montagu, in the purest and most elegant language, delivers sentiments equally just and sublime as his, we are surprised and delighted; the gracefulness of her manner seems to add beauty to her thoughts; her words sink into our hearts, like the softest sounds of the most perfect harmony...

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Not minds of melancholy strain, / Still silent, or that still complain, / Can the dear bondage bless; / As well may heavenly concert spring / From two old lutes with ne'er a string, / Or none besides the bass."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"When his reason returned, it settled into a melancholy, which time has soothed, not extinguished, which indeed seems to have become the habitual tone of his mind."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"For the mind is an instrument, which, if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained, will abate of its vigour."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777, 1810

"When thus, by prospect, and by thought, / My mind to harmony is wrought; / Already conscious of the rising strain, / The path to Knighton I regain."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)