Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1777

"Her mind's a burning fire, / Where sudden thoughts, like wreaths of smoak arise, / And, parting from the flame, disperse in air."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1777, 1810

"While thus he ranges unconfined, / And glory fires his ardent mind."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: w. 1755, 1777

"But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the same manner she does the other substance, matter."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1781

"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1782

"In life's first season, when the fever's flame / Shrunk to deformity his shrivell'd frame, / And turn'd each fairer image in his brain / To blank confusion and her crazy train."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Laughs not the spirit of poetic frame, / However slightly warm'd by Fancy's flame, / When grave Bossu by System's studied laws / The Grecian Bard's ideal picture draws"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"The noble thought, that fir'd a Grecian soul, / Keeps o'er a British mind its firm control."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Fanatic frenzy" is "the false fire of an o'erheated mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"I read it carefully a second time--pondered--weighed--and submitted--whenever a spark of vanity seems to be glowing at my heart--I will read your letter--and what then?"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)