Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: April, 1778

"The sound of the mind we hear; but what it is we cannot tell. The music which it utters, its melody, its harmony, its discord, its variety of notes, have been written by Shakespeare with a wonderful degree of perfection, so as to be themselves to every cultivated reader. We have even gamuts and ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"What are we doing while we are endeavouring to recollect an idea which we have forgotten? What faculty is then exerted? How is it exerted? Nothing can be more wildly mysterious. A learned and ingenious physician gave me a very pretty similitude as a slight explanation of it. Said he 'You are lik...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1783

"There is a certain string, which, being properly struck, the human heart is so made as to answer to it."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1789

"I rejoiced in spirit, making melody in my heart to the God of all my mercies, Now my whole wish was to be dissolved, and to be with Christ—but, alas! I must wait mine appointed time."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1790

"His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations; and endeavours, like a child that has not yet gone to school, to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderati...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)