Date: 1718

"A thousand little Nerves She sends / Quite to our Toes, and Fingers Ends; / And These in Gratitude again / Return their Spirits to the Brain; / In which their Figure being printed / (As just before, I think, I hinted) / Alma inform'd can try the Case, / As She had seen upon the Place. // Thus, w...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1738, 1739

"The Mind, a Blank, when Life begins to flow, / But without Knowledge capable to know, / The God of Nature to our Care commits; / As to the Press we send th' unsully'd Sheets."

— Bancks, John (1709-1751)

Date: 1739

"True Witness of my Sonship Thou, / Engraving Pardon on my Heart: / Seal of my Sins in CHRIST forgiven, / Earnest of Love, and Pledge of Heav'n."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1763

"Explore the dark recesses of the mind, / In the Soul's honest volume read mankind, / And own, in wise and simple, great and small, / The same grand leading Principle in All."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1773, 1894-1895

One may learn "her Lesson from within" and "There […] read the Characters imprest / Upon the Mind of ev'ry human Breast,-- / The native Laws prescrib'd to every Soul, / And Love, the One Fulfiller of the Whole."

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"But plant ideas like a printing-press; / Or, graven copper-plate, again to roll / The pristine stamp of proud Employer's Soul."

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)