Date: First performed February 17, 1720.

"Then say, Eudocia, / If, like a Soul anneal'd in purging Fires, / After whole Years thou see'st me white again, / When thou, ev'n thou shalt think."

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

Date: First performed February 17, 1720.

"My vital Flame / There, like a Taper on the holy Altar, / Shall waste away; till Heav'n relenting hear / Incessant Pray'rs for thee and for my self, / And wing my Soul to meet with thine in Bliss."

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

Date: 1722

"Now boiling high / With Injuries;--with Outrages!--that burn, / That set the very suffering Soul on Fire!"

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1730

"There is something so pathetick in this kind of diction, that it often sets the mind in a flame, and makes our hearts burn within us."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1736

"THOU, matur'd by glad Hesperian Suns, / Tobacco, Fountain pure of limpid Truth, / That looks the very Soul; whence pouring Thought / Swarms all the Mind; absorpt is yellow Care, / And at each Puff Imagination burns."

— Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1705-1760)

Date: 1745

"All these Pleasures of his Breast should die, / The Beams of Science from his Soul retire / And fade, extinguish'd by a nobler Fire, / As kindled Wood, howe'er its Flames may rise, / When the bright Sun appears, in Embers dies."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)

Date: 1745

"Soon as his Breast receiv'd the potent Ray, / Whate'er possest it, instantly gave way; / As in the Wood before the Lightning's Beam, / Perish the Leaves, and the whole Tree is Flame."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)

Date: 1748

Thought is "The fire that warms the poet's brain."

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1757

"But when it is such a truth, as I do not only hear, but feel; and it comes home to my own very sense and experience: shall any sophistical reasonings wrangle me out of it; what though I cannot resolve the question, [GREEK CHARACTERS] whence the evil was derived: whether from the soul formed in t...

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: 1759

"It is what is properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)