Date: 1777

"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Let me, therefore, prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the s...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)