Date: w. 1798, 1803-4

"He had perceived the presence and the power / Of greatness, and deep feelings had impressed / Great objects on his mind with portraiture / And colour so distinct that on his mind / They lay like substances, and almost seemed / To haunt the bodily sense."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1791, 1806

"Then spare, thou sweet Urchin, thou soother of pain, / Oh! spare the soft picture engrav'd on my heart; / As a record of Love let it ever remain; / My bosom thy tablet--thy pencil a dart."

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1809, 1812

"Or through some fairy palace fancy roves, / And studs, with ruby lamps, the fretted roof / Or paints with every colour of the bow / Spotless parterres, all freakt with snow-white flowers, / Flowers that no archetype in nature own."

— Graham, James (1765-1811)

Date: 1810

"For the mark'd lines that Memory's tints display / In contemplation's fire will melt away,"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"No picture, be it ever so well painted, can vie with the memory in that exactness, with which she presents, early in absence, the image of that form and face, whose lineaments are dear to us"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"Therefore, actual pictures of beloved friends would not be so eagerly coveted, but that we render this darling, internal image indistinct, by recalling it too frequently; as that strength of line, which gives sharpness and spirit to a copper-plate, becomes injured after a certain number of impre...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

An internal image is like a copper plate: "By repeated use, the plate, if not retouched, will produce only a dim and shadowy mass, in which the features and countenance cannot be very distinctly discerned."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"So it is with the memory, after continual recurrence, and pressure of the affections upon the image she presents, which, for a considerable period, she had presented with that perfect precision, to which no powers of the pencil can attain;--but, in time, the image becomes indistinct, not from an...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"Yes, it is beneath the constant glow of ardent imagination, that the impression, given by memory, has faded. Then it is that a good, nay even an indifferent picture, or a paper-profile of a dear lost friend, strengthens our recollection, in the same manner that retouching a copper-plate restores...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

We desire a "penciled remembrance of those we love" in order to "refresh that ideal image which intense and perpetual contemplation had rendered evanescent"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)