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Date: 1743

"Of what Use is Reason then? Why, of the Use that a Window is to a Man in a Prison, to let him see the Horrors he is confined in; but lends him no Assistance to his Escape"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

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Date: 1759, performed 1776

The soul may be "Snatch'd by the power of music from her cell / Of fleshly thraldom" and feel "herself upborn / On plumes of ecstasy"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

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Date: 1761

"While Frugi liv'd / Thy sorrows kept possession of my heart, / And Love receded from the stronger guest; / Now his dear image rises to my view / So piteously array'd, with such a train / Of tender thoughts assails this shatter'd frame, / That Reason quits her fort, and flies before, / To the las...

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

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Date: 1762

"Thy griefs pent up, have prey'd upon thy heart."

— Cradock, Joseph (1742-1826)

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Date: 1762

"Avarice has canker'd their imprison'd minds, / And lust of gold has blinded them to justice."

— Cradock, Joseph (1742-1826)

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Date: 1764

"I suppose, Gentlemen, my memory, or mind, to be a chest of drawers, a kind of bureau; where, in separate cellules, my different knowlege on different subjects is stor'd."

— Foote, Samuel (1720-1777)

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Date: 1764

"To this cabinet volition, or will, has a key; so when an arduous subject occurs, I unlock my bureau, pull out the particular drawer, and am supply'd with what I want in an instant."

— Foote, Samuel (1720-1777)

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Date: 1781

"Oh, I begin to take you--your days--the rusticated remains of a ruined Temple Critic--a smatterer of high life from the scenes of Cibber, which remain upon his imagination, as they do upon the stage, forty years after the real characters are lost"

— Burgoyne, John (1722-1792)

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Date: 1782

"Have you shewn a jewel / Out of the cabinet of your rich mind / To lock it up again?"

— Dudley, Sir Henry Bate (1745-1824)

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Date: 1793

"I must consider what's to be done--and in this room my thoughts are too confined to reflect."

— Inchbald [née Simpson], Elizabeth (1753-1821)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.