Date: 1796

"WIT on all points is out of season, / It's use is to embroider reason."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"Good sense like cloth, the ground-work place, / And then sow on your Wit and lace."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"Some hurt themselves by flippant WIT, / As too much GAS, balloons will split;-- / With buoyant splendour, up they rise, / The spirit bursts, the bubble dies."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"By Locke, true WIT is best defin'd, / Her pleasant pictures lure the mind; / Associations sudden rise, / And seize the fancy by surprise."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"The effect [of wit on the mind] is strong,--because it's odd, / Like fire electric from a clod; / Or when fix'd air puts out a light, / Tho' vital makes it blaze more bright."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"Discordant tho' the ideas be, / In Fancy's logic they agree; / As in the Ark by special grace, / Mice liv'd with Cats, yet throve apace."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"The chains of care fall off my pensive mind, / When through the winds your spirit hails me."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1797, 1810

"For pressure but new-springs the generous mind; /As gold by Vulcan's torture is refined."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1797

"To come a little closer to the point, we strongly suspect the fancy's coinage in this affair, and that he is, bona fide, the offspring of a Bristol brain, instead of a province of Persia."

— Anonymous

Date: February 19, 1798

"Whether material substance unrefined, / Owns the strong impulse of instinctive mind, / Which to one centre points diverging lines, / Confounds, refracts, invig'rates, and combines?"

— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846)