Date: 1768

Thoughts may "unbridled dare / Forward fly in wild career; /In their most impetuous course"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1768

"This Winged Boy a gentle mind did bear, / As gentle as the beast [a lamb] which him up-bore, / Ne could he see th'unhappy drop a tear / But it would make his breast with pity sore, / And he himself would weep and grieve therefore."

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"Pox on their philosophy! Instead of demonstrating the immortality of the soul, they have plainly proved the soul is a chimæra, a will o' the wisp, a bubble, a term, a word, a nothing!"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1770

"These chronic Passions, while from real woes / They rise, and yet without the body's fault / Infest the soul, admit one only cure; / Diversion, hurry, and a restless life."

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: September, 1770

"This double feeling is of various kinds and various degrees; some minds receiving a colour from the objects around them, like the effects of the sun beams playing thro' a prism; and others, like the cameleon, having no colours of their own, take just the colours of what chances to be nearest them."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Thus Heaven enlarged his soul in riper years. / For Nature gave him strength, and fire, to soar, / On Fancy's wing, above this vale of tears."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Fancy now no more / Wantons on fickle pinion through the skies; / But, fix'd in aim, and conscious of her power, / Sublime from cause to cause exults to rise, / Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1772

"My Brain's disturb'd; alas! alas! I rave; / What can I do? a poor forsaken Slave! / Like Birds, that spend their little idle Rage, / And, fruitless, mourn, indignant of their Cage, / From Thought to Thought, my fluttering Spirits rove, / Betray'd to Bondage, and, ah! lost to Love."

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811) [Editor]