Date: April, 1778

"The sound of the mind we hear; but what it is we cannot tell. The music which it utters, its melody, its harmony, its discord, its variety of notes, have been written by Shakespeare with a wonderful degree of perfection, so as to be themselves to every cultivated reader. We have even gamuts and ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1780, 1781, 1788

"Thy simple diction, free from glaring art, / With sweet allurement steals upon the heart, / Pure, as the rill, that Nature's hand refines; / Clear, as thy harmony of soul, it shines."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1780

"If my eventful tale / Hath touch'd the chords of pity in your heart, / And swell'd the sympathetic tear--soft tribute! / By gentle minds, to sorrow ever paid, / --Know, 'tis no stranger's woes I have related; / I am the object of my own sad story."

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

Date: 1782

"I meant to have repeated the lesson, to have tuned your whole heart to compassion, and to have taught you the sad duties of sympathising humanity."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"Where are those cunning men, / Who boast, by chosen sounds, and measur'd sweetness, / To set the busy spirits in a flame, / And cool them at their will? who know the art / To call the hidden pow'rs of numbers forth, / And make that pliant instrument, the mind, / Yield to the pow'rful sympathy of...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: April, 1783

"What are we doing while we are endeavouring to recollect an idea which we have forgotten? What faculty is then exerted? How is it exerted? Nothing can be more wildly mysterious. A learned and ingenious physician gave me a very pretty similitude as a slight explanation of it. Said he 'You are lik...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1783

"There is a certain string, which, being properly struck, the human heart is so made as to answer to it."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1784

"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1785

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: "as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)