Date: 1742 [see first edition, 1733]
"The Mind, like a Tabula rasa, easyly receives the first Impression; and, like that, when the first Impression is deeply made, it with Difficulty admits of an Erasement of the first Characters, which in some Minds are indelible"
preview | full record— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)
Date: February 1738
One may be " In State most desponding, by the Light of a Taper, / With Thoughts dull and dark as my Wax, or my Paper"
preview | full record— Tickell, Thomas (1685-1740)
Date: 1741, 1742, 1755
"For it was Aristotle's opinion, who compared the soul to a 'rasa tabula', that human sensations and reflections were passions: These therefore are what he finely calls, the 'passive intelligent'; which, he says, shall cease, or is corruptible."
preview | full record— Warburton, William (1698-1779)
Date: 1752, 1790
Apollo's "sacred fire" inspires the bard's breast, "Like the fair empty sheet he hangs to view, / Void, and unfurnish'd, till inspir'd by you."
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)
Date: 1752, 1790
"O let one beam, one kind inlightning ray / At once upon his mind and paper play!"
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)
Date: 1752, 1790
"The yielding paper's pure, but vacant breast, / By her fair hand and flowing pen imprest, / At ev'ry touch more animated grows."
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)
Date: 1752
"Yet hold me near Thee; set me as a Seal, / Deep on thy dear dear Heart!"
preview | full record— Browne, Moses (1706-1787)
Date: 1752
"Go, Christian! with th' endearing Pledges seal'd / Fresh on thy Soul, resembling Pattern show/ How Jesus liv'd"
preview | full record— Browne, Moses (1706-1787)
Date: 1757
"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."
preview | full record— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)
Date: 1765 [1764]
"Manfred, who, though he had distinguished her by great indulgence, had imprinted her mind with terror from his causeless rigour to such amiable princesses as Hippolita and Matilda."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)