Date: 1757

"Behold, thro' fancy's mirrour, what a scene / The phantom opens, ample, wide, and fair, / Each golden minute, bearing as it flies / Imaginary raptures on its wing; / Flatt'ring my fond deluded heart with dreams / Of lasting pleasure--but alas, how soon / This fairy Eden to a waste is turn'd?"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: w. 1757-1758, 1861

"Nous ne voyons ni l'âme d'autrui, parce qu'elle se cache, ni la notre, parce que nous n'avons point de miroir intellectuel [We do not see the soul of others, because it hides itself, nor our own, because we have no intellectual mirror]."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1759

"Unfortunately this moral looking-glass is not always a very good one. Common looking-glasses, it is said, are extremely deceitful, and by the glare which they throw over the face, conceal from the partial eyes of the person many deformities which are obvious to every body besides. But there is n...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"A Genius implies the rays of the mind concenter'd, and determined to some particular point; when they are scatter'd widely, they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force, to fire, or dissolve, the heart."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he first views the propriet...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"By such a Search, she will Self-Knowledge gain, / And learn her ruling Passion to restrain; / She will herself, in Reason's Mirror, see, / And pleas'd, assert, her Immortality."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1759

"If not with Prejudice, and Passion blind, / In Reason's Glass, you will your Error find. / Search the Recesses of the human Soul, / Mark there, what secret Springs her Acts controul."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1753, 1759, 1770

"But still in Fancy's mirror sees / Some more romantic scene would please, / There within a nook most dark, / Where none my musing mood may mark, / Let me, in many a whisper'd rite, / The Genius old of Greece invite, / With that fair wreath my brows to bind, / Which for his chosen imps he twin'd,...

— Warton, Thomas, the younger (1728-1790)

Date: 1759

"Each charm thro' Fancy's mirrour shone / Fresh as the rose, as lillies fair; / But, ah! the rose and lilly's gone, /Beauty has a small empire there, / And total ruin fears."

— Stephens, Edward (fl. 1747-1765)

Date: 1760

"And here it will be proper to have recourse to the expedient we made use of before, and holding up the mirrour to imagination, view the whole scene as if actually present"

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)