Date: 1755, 1771
"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: 1772, 1810
"His vital spark her earthly cell forsook, / And into air her fleeting progress took."
preview | full record— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)
Date: 1773
"Yet of etherial temper are their souls, / And in their veins the tide of honour rolls; / And valour kindles there the hero's flame, / Contempt of death, and thirst of martial flame. / And pity melts the sympathizing breast, / Ah! fatal virtue!—for the brave distrest."
preview | full record— Day, Thomas (1748-1789)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"The mind, or genius has been compared to a spark of fire, which is smothered by a heap of fewel, and prevented from blazing into a flame: This simile which is made use of, by the younger Pliny, may be easily mistaken for argument or proof."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"There is no danger of the mind's being over-burthened with knowledge, or the genius extinguished by any addition of images; on the contrary, these acquisitions may be as well, perhaps better, be compared, if comparisons signified any thing in reasoning, to the supply of living embers, which will...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"Our hearts frequently warmed in this manner, by the contact of those whom we wish to resemble, will undoubtedly catch something of their way of thinking, and we shall receive in our own bosoms some radiation at least of their fire and splendour."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1774
"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1775
An "unquenchable" spark may glow within the breast and blaze into freedom
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)