Date: 1775
"On this deceptive mirror FANCY gaz'd; / For in its field she saw whate'er she pleas'd: / Whate'er in thought her fertile brain design'd, / (The varying labours of her changeful mind,) / Whate'er she wills, within its orb she spies, / True to her wish the airy visions rise."
preview | full record— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)
Date: 1776-1789
"The emperor Maximus, who had advanced as far as Ravenna, to secure that important place, and to hasten the military preparations, beheld the event of the war in the more faithful mirror of reason and policy."
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1777
"Parents may, perhaps, paint it to themselves: they may see (through the mirror of a sympathetic fancy) the poor widow receiving her child from the healing hand of the prophet--a child fresh blooming in the beauties of a second birth."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1778
"Renown'd ARCADIA, fam'd by Grecian bards, / In fancy's mirror strikes th' enraptur'd eye; / The pastures green replete with lowing herds, / Where brousing flocks, and careless shepherds lie."
preview | full record— Graham, Charles (1750 ca.-1796 fl.)
Date: 1780
"Thy simple diction, free from glaring art, / With sweet allurement steals upon the heart; / Pure as the rill, that Nature's hand refines, / A cloudless mirror of thy soul it shines"
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1781
Fancy may never "view a shape of lovelier kind / In the bright mirror of her Shakespeare's mind."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1781
"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1782
"Where'er that Parent of engaging thought, / Warm Sensibility, like light, has taught / The bright'ning mirror of the mind to shew / Nature's reflected forms in all their glow."
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1782
"We now perceive every [idea], as it passes, through a small aperture separately, as in the camera obscura, and this we call time; but at the conclusion of this state we may probably exist in a manner quite different; the window may be thrown open, the whole prospect appear at one view, and all t...
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)