Date: Wednesday, June 27, 1711
"Not to be tedious, there is scarce any Emotion in the Mind which does not produce a suitable Agitation in the Fan; insomuch, that if I only see the Fan of a disciplin'd Lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
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."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: Friday, April 17. 1724
"Their Imaginations are thin, and delicate; and play lightly on the Skirts of Objects: But they are too weak for solid Reasoning; and, in any Thing abstracted, and above the Pitch of the Senses, they are miserably Impotent, and grow presently weary."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1737
"So many things freely thrown out, such lengths of unreserv'd friendship, thoughts just warm from the brain, without any polishing or dress, the very dishabille of the understanding."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Where virtue, rising from the awful depth / Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake / The unadorn'd condition of her birth; / And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues, / Assumes a various feature, to attract, / With charms responsive to each gazer's eye, / The hearts of men."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"What? like a storm from their capacious bed / The sounding seas o'erwhelming, when the might / Of these eruptions, working from the depth / Of man's strong apprehension, shakes his frame / Even to the base; from every naked sense / Of pain or pleasure dissipating all / Opinion's feeble coverings...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1747-8
"Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame."
preview | full record— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Date: 1777
"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)