Date: 1744

"Commanding, with omnipotence of thought, / Creations new in Fancy's field to rise! / Souls, that can grasp whate'er the Almighty made, / And wander wild through things impossible!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Are there on earth (let me not call them men) / Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts; / Unconscious as the mountain of its ore; / Or rock, of its inestimable gem? / When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these / Shall know their treasure; treasure then no more.

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Oft misled / By that bland light, the young unpractis'd views / Of reason wander through a fatal road, / Far from their native aim."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thus he learns / Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt / The avenues of sense; what laws direct / Their union; and what various discords rise, / Or fix'd or casual: which when his clear thought / Retains and when his faithful words express, / That living image of the external scene, / ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1746

"Farewell, for clearer ken designed, / The dim-discovered tracts of mind: / Truths which, from action's paths retired, / My silent search in vain required!"

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

Date: 1746

"No more I search those magic shores, / What regions part the world of soul, / Or whence thy streams, Opinion, roll"

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

Date: 1746

Imagination may play "Unbridled in the fields of day, / Thro endless time, and boundless space, / Continue unrestrain'd her race"

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1746, 1753

"Fear is elusive sorrow, shunning pain; / Active--yet, stop'd--it dims the doubtful brain; / Spirit snatch'd inward, stagnating, by dread, / Slow, thro' the limbs, crawls cold, the living lead: / Form'd to the look, that moulds th' assumer's face, / His joints catch tremblings--life's moist strin...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: Tuesday, March 27, 1750

"The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more p...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750

"The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powerful to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)