Date: 1777

"The consciousness of what I mean by this letter to reveal, hangs like guilt upon my mind; therefore it is that I have so long delayed writing."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"That they are commonly vanquished by an effort to vanquish them; and that the sinking under their pressure, is one of those diseases of the mind, which, like certain diseases of the body, the exercise of its better faculties will very soon remove."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"He felt the assiduity of my friendship, and I saw him grateful for its exertion; yet would the idea of being obliged, often rankle in his mind."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[H]er spirits droop more than her body; she is thoughtful and melancholy when she thinks she is not observed, and, what pleases me worse, affects to appear otherwise, when she is"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

In "the dark maeanders" of Vice's "foul abode ... busy Spirits forge, with curious art,/ The triple plates of brass, to guard the heart / From Reason's bold assault"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1777

In Vice's "foul abode ... hellish ministers with fatal care / From baneful drugs the potent juice prepare; / Whose dead'ning posset dulls the mental sense

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1777, 1793

"Hail, sacred solitude! These are thy works, / True source of good supreme! Thy blest effects /Already on my mind's delighted eye / Open beneficent"

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1778

"A thirst for knowledge, which can never be gratified, would not have been implanted; a mind which was to be chained to the earth, would never have been bent on the skies"

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)

Date: 1778

"To melancholy thoughts awakes the soul, / And lulls the mind to contemplation's dream"

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

Date: 1778

"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)