Date: 1691

"If Old and New i'th Brain together crowd, / How is it Room and Peace is them allow'd? /How do they and their Equipages come? /For if Material, they must take up room. / And tract of Time would hoard up such a Crop, / The crowded Atoms would the Channels stop, / And choke the Passages of Vision up."

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1691

"I was nothing but all Flame and Fire, and the red-hot Thoughts glared about my Brains at such a rate, and if visible, wou'd, I fancy, have made just such a dreadful Appearance as the Window of a Glass-house discovers in a dark Night--viz. a parcel of stragling fiery Globes marching about and hiz...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1695

"The busie Crowd fills all the labouring Brain, / Bright Fancy's Work-house, where close Cells contain / Of Forms and Images an endless Train, / Which thither thro' the waking Senses glide, / And in fair Mem'ry's Magazine abide."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1697

"Our Senses to the Mind while lodg'd in Clay, / Do all their various Images convey. / Things that we tast, and feel, and see, afford / The Seeds of Thought with which our Minds are stor'd."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1702

"When Friends converse together Face to Face; / Then freely they Unbosom their Requests, / And treasure Secrets in each others Breasts, / As in firm Cabinets, close lock'd, where none / Can find the Key, but only each his own."

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

Date: 1703

"The streiten'd Intellect immur'd does lie, / Shut up within a narrow place, / Till Nature does enlarge the Space, / And by degrees the Organs fit, / For those great Operations which are wrought by it."

— Chudleigh [née Lee], Mary, Lady Chudleigh (bap. 1656, d. 1710)

Date: Read 1680-1681, published 1705

"Memory then conceive to be nothing else but a Repository of Ideas formed partly by the Senses, but chiefly by the Soul it self: I say, partly by the Senses, because they are as it were the Collectors or Carriers of the Impressions made by Objects from without, delivering them to the Repository o...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1709, 1714

"They may perhaps be Monsters, and not Divinitys, or Sacred Truths, which are kept thus choicely, in some dark Corner of our Minds: The Specters may impose on us, whilst we refuse to turn 'em every way, and view their Shapes and Complexions in every light."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: From Saturd. March 25. to Tuesd. March 28. 1710

"The Memory of an old Visiting-Lady is so filled with Gloves, Silks, and Ribands, that I can look upon it as nothing else but a Toy-shop."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Tuesday, January 15, 1712

"We observed a long Antrum or Cavity in the Sinciput, that was filled with Ribbons, Lace and Embroidery, wrought together in a most curious Piece of Network, the Parts of which were likewise imperceptible to the naked Eye. Another of these Antrums or Cavities was stuffed with invisible Billetdoux...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)