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)

Date: 1810

Two cause produce the vanishing of internal images; "viz. the mind not having dwelt upon the originals of those its pictures often enough to make their image strong and vivid after long absence; --and, its too frequently casting upon such inshrined resemblances, the dazzling light of fervent med...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1817

"The lights and shades, in contrast due, / Relieve each other in the view: / Alike the moral painter's part / T'obey the rules of studious art; / Thus to attract the mental eye / With height'ning variety;-- / And as the pencil truly gives / Each form that on the canvas lives, / To make his pen ad...

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1817

"In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1817

"The wise Stagyrite speaks of no successive particles propagating motion like billiard balls (as Hobbs;) nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inanimate and irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by ascension, into living and intelligent fluids, that etch and re-etch eng...

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)