Date: 1770

"There were some passages in both your letters that plucked my very heart-strings"

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1773

"Smooth like her verse her passions learned to move, / And her whole soul was harmony and love."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1776

"The country, as the poets tell us, is the scene for love; the pleasing objects that surround us, the pureness of the air, but, above all, its stillness, harmonize the soul, and render it susceptible of every soft and tender feeling."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"When Mrs. Montagu, in the purest and most elegant language, delivers sentiments equally just and sublime as his, we are surprised and delighted; the gracefulness of her manner seems to add beauty to her thoughts; her words sink into our hearts, like the softest sounds of the most perfect harmony...

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Not minds of melancholy strain, / Still silent, or that still complain, / Can the dear bondage bless; / As well may heavenly concert spring / From two old lutes with ne'er a string, / Or none besides the bass."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"For the mind is an instrument, which, if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained, will abate of its vigour."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1780

"If my eventful tale / Hath touch'd the chords of pity in your heart, / And swell'd the sympathetic tear--soft tribute! / By gentle minds, to sorrow ever paid, / --Know, 'tis no stranger's woes I have related; / I am the object of my own sad story."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1782

"I meant to have repeated the lesson, to have tuned your whole heart to compassion, and to have taught you the sad duties of sympathising humanity."

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

Date: 1782

"Where are those cunning men, / Who boast, by chosen sounds, and measur'd sweetness, / To set the busy spirits in a flame, / And cool them at their will? who know the art / To call the hidden pow'rs of numbers forth, / And make that pliant instrument, the mind, / Yield to the pow'rful sympathy of...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"The caresses of an animal he had so long remembered, touched some chord of the heart that vibrated to softer emotions than those which had for the last three hours possessed him--he burst into tears."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)