Date: 1782

"Laughs not the spirit of poetic frame, / However slightly warm'd by Fancy's flame, / When grave Bossu by System's studied laws / The Grecian Bard's ideal picture draws"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"The noble thought, that fir'd a Grecian soul, / Keeps o'er a British mind its firm control."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Fanatic frenzy" is "the false fire of an o'erheated mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

The "love of Nature's works" "is a flame that dies not even there / Where nothing feeds it"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"It were to be wished, therefore, that every part of a liturgy were personally applicable to every individual in the congregation; and that nothing were introduced to interrupt the passion, or damp the flame, which it is not easy to rekindle."

— Paley, William (1743-1805)

Date: 1785

"Behold the man a firmer bond requires, / For him the passion kindles all its fires."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1786

"You confound their abilities by the severity of their servitude: for as a spark of fire, if crushed by too great a weight of incumbent fuel, cannot be blown into a flame, but suddenly expires, so the human mind, if depressed by rigorous servitude, cannot be excited to a display of those facultie...

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)

Date: 1786

"If at this recital his indignation should arise, let him consider it as the genuine production of nature; that she recoiled at the horrid thought, and that she applied instantly a torch to his breast to kindle his resentment."

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"Because these Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1788

" My panting soul is all on fire"

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)