Date: 1733-4
"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1737
"My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own faults at first view; as when a stream shows the dirt at its bottom, it shows also the transparency of the water."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1743
"We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile: / The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. / Our quick-returning folly cancels all; / As the tide rushing rases what is writ / In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1743
"Some hearts, in secret hard, unapt to melt, / Struck by the magic of the public eye, / Like Moses' smitten rock, gush out amain."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1759
"Minds slothful, like uncultivated Earth, / To Weeds of Vice, and Folly, give a Birth; / Silver, and Gold, for Want of proper Use, / Their Splendor lose, and cancrous Rust produce; / Streams owe their Purity, to active Speed, / If Waters stagnate, they Corruption breed."
preview | full record— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)
Date: 1759
"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Published serially, 1765-1770
"O, my Sister, I would to Heaven that he had now been present, as I have been present, to have his Soul melted and minted as mine has been"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: Published serially, 1765-1770
"I was melted down and minted anew, as it were, by the unaffected Warmth and Innocence of your Caresses"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in the possession of the Art. / / As in the mixture of the variety of metals, which are said to h...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1775
"But, O, my brother! if thou hast a heart / That is not steel'd with stoic apathy / Against the magic of all-conqu'ring love, / Beware of beauty's pow'r; for she has charms / Wou'd melt the frozen breast of hoary age, / Or draw the lonely hermit from his cell / To gaze upon her."
preview | full record— Francklin, Thomas (1721-1784)