Date: 1785

"Who then that has a mind well strung and tuned / To contemplation, and within his reach / A scene so friendly to his favourite task, / Would waste attention at the chequer'd board, / His host of wooden warriors to and fro / Marching and counter-marching, with an eye / As fixt as marble, with a f...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"I thought to see Dan. Pope a swan, / After his soul had done with man; / And many a tuneful soul, in love, / Cooing soft couplets in a dove; / Huge elephants I thought to find / The lodgings of the learned mind; / Pindar's pure soul in Eagle mould, / And Gray's on the same perch of gold; / Hammo...

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1785

Silence is the "Refuge of tender hearts must fear mixing "With the mad multitude, where passions fell, / And strangers to their bosom, enter wild, / Like Sin and Death in Paradise, to jar / On the soft music of according souls!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1787

"Fat flattens the most brilliant thoughts, / Like the buff-stop on harpsichords, or spinets-- / Muffling their pretty little tuneful throats, / That would have chirp'd away like linnets."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1788

"The caresses of an animal he had so long remembered, touched some chord of the heart that vibrated to softer emotions than those which had for the last three hours possessed him--he burst into tears."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"Emmeline would then have taken him; but she said no; and sitting down on the ground, held him in her lap, till Barret who had seen her from a window, came out and took him from her; to which, as to a thing usual, she consented, and then walked calmly home with Emmeline, who, extremely discompose...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"I rejoiced in spirit, making melody in my heart to the God of all my mercies, Now my whole wish was to be dissolved, and to be with Christ—but, alas! I must wait mine appointed time."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1790

"His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderati...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"His mind resembled a finetoned instrument, whose extensive compass was capable of producing the most sublime and elevating sounds; but a fatal pressure relaxed the strings, and sunk its powerful harmony."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: June, 1793

"'Tis fancy, powerful fancy wings / The poet's flight whene'er he sings, / Fancy strikes the living lyre, / Fancy sheds poetic fire!"

— Anonymous