Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of Art, he is possessed of that-presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great, and what is little; brings home knowledge from the East and from the West; making the universe tributary towards fu...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1782

The swell of pity may not be confined with "the scanty limits of the mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

Time is a river that fails to enrich the mind and "leaves a dreary waste behind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1783

"Some, indeed, there are, who, by a strength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole composition, preserve the reader's mind always in a tone nearly allied to the Sublime; for which reason they may, in a limited sense, merit the name of continue...

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1788

"When Passion's tides thro' mans' strong art'ries roar, / His heart resists them like a flinty shore; / But our frail frames, like mould'ring banks, give way."

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

Date: 1789?

The "placid current" of the mind may be bestorm'd so that "th' ideal billows, raging, rise"

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

Date: 1789

"The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word."

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

Date: 1790

"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790

"All the splendour of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habit...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)