Date: 1776

"The country, as the poets tell us, is the scene for love; the pleasing objects that surround us, the pureness of the air, but, above all, its stillness, harmonize the soul, and render it susceptible of every soft and tender feeling."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"When Mrs. Montagu, in the purest and most elegant language, delivers sentiments equally just and sublime as his, we are surprised and delighted; the gracefulness of her manner seems to add beauty to her thoughts; her words sink into our hearts, like the softest sounds of the most perfect harmony...

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Not minds of melancholy strain, / Still silent, or that still complain, / Can the dear bondage bless; / As well may heavenly concert spring / From two old lutes with ne'er a string, / Or none besides the bass."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"When his reason returned, it settled into a melancholy, which time has soothed, not extinguished, which indeed seems to have become the habitual tone of his mind."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"For the mind is an instrument, which, if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained, will abate of its vigour."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777, 1810

"When thus, by prospect, and by thought, / My mind to harmony is wrought; / Already conscious of the rising strain, / The path to Knighton I regain."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

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)