Date: 1774
"Some have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot, by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lu...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1774
Romances "ventilate the mind by sudden gusts of passion; and prevent the stagnation of thought, by a fresh infusion of dissimilar ideas"
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1774
"The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance"
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1774
"The attraction of the magnet is only exerted upon similar particles; and to taste the beauties of Homer it is requisite to partake his fire: but every one can relish the author who represents common life, because every one can refer to the originals from whence his ideas were taken"
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1781
"The peculiar design of this publication is, to impress devotional feelings as early as possible on the infant mind; fully convinced as the author is, that they cannot be impressed too soon, and that a child, to feel the full force of the idea of God, ought never to remember the time when he had ...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1781
"The mother loveth her little child; she bringeth it up on her knees; she nourisheth its body with food; she feedeth its mind with knowledge."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1790, 1794
"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790, 1794
He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790, 1794
"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790, 1794
"Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)