Date: w. 1739, 1762
Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1766
"For Brag [a card game] most wisely was design'd, / To shew each pimple of the mind, / The faithful mirror of the heart, / Each lurking foible to impart."
preview | full record— Jemmat [née Yeo], Catherine (bap. 1714, d. 1766?)
Date: 1767, 1784
"So, when on some weighty truth / A beam of heav'nly light its lustre sheds, / To Reason's eye it looks supremely fair."
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1787
"May Europe's race the generous toil pursue, / And Truth's broad mirror spread to every view; / Awake to Reason's voice the savage mind, / Check Error's force, and civilize mankind."
preview | full record— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)
Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788
"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1788
"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
Poetry "reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)