Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788

"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1788

"Seize! seize! the glowing images that pass / Like transient shadows o'er the mimic glass!"

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1788

"Since there is no convexity in MIND, / Why are thy genial beams to parts confined?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"Whene'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes, / Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise; / I see, by more than Fancy's mirror shewn, / The burning village, and the blazing town."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"The purity of his intentions, and the uprightness of his principles--the transcript before you will sufficiently establish;--it is a mental mirror, in which you behold the features of the writer's mind, as distinctly as a looking glass reflects, to a young beauty, her cheek of roses, and her eye...

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1788

"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"She had a metaphysical turn, which inclined her to reflect on every object that passed by her; and her mind was not like a mirror, which receives every floating image, but does not retain them: she had not any prejudices, for every opinion was examined before it was adopted."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Oh! I'm sick to the soul, to see Music alone, / Stretch her negligent length on the Drama's gay throne; / Where Muses more honor'd by Wisdom should sit, / To adorn the heart's mirror, and fashion our wit"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1789

"Thro' thy [Fancy's] false medium then, no longer view'd, / May fancied pain and fancied pleasure fly, / And I, as from me all thy dreams depart, / Be to my wayward destiny subdu'd."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)