Date: 1653

"Our fancies which in verse or prose we put, / May pictures be, which they do draw or cut."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

Date: 1681

"That, for all furniture, you'l find / Only your Picture in my Mind."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1681

"For thou alone to people me, / Art grown a num'rous Colony; / And a Collection choicer far / Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1691

"How haps it then, Ideas stay behind, / And, when We please, can paint anew the Mind, / When what created them is fled, like Wind?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1712

"When Man with Reason dignify'd is born, / No Images his naked Mind adorn: / No Sciences or Arts enrich his Brain, / Nor Fancy yet displays her pictur'd Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1712

"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"Thou see'st from whence her Colours Fancy takes, / Of what Materials she her Pencil makes / By which she paints her Scenes with such Applause, / And in the Brain ten thousand Landskips draws."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1727

"Hence, thro' her nourish'd Powers, enlarged by Thee, / She soaring, spurns, with elevated Pride, / The tangling Mass of Cares, and low Desires, / That bind the fluttering Crowd; and, Angel-wing'd, / The Heights of Science and of Vertue gains, / Where all is calm and bright! with Nature round, / ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"BUT yonder breathing Prospect bids the Muse / Throw all her Beauty forth, that Daubing all / Will be to what I gaze; for who can paint / Like Nature? Can Imagination boast / Amid his gay Creation Hues like Her's? / And can He mix them with that matchless Skill, / And lay them on so delicately sw...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

Exhausted Nature sinks a-while to Rest, / Still interrupted by disorder'd Dreams, / That o'er the sick Imagination rise, / And in black Colours paint the mimic Scene."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)