Date: 1778

"An exact imitation, therefore, of those pictures, is likely to fill the student’s mind with false opinions, and to send him back a colourist of his own formation, with ideas equally remote from nature and from art, from the genuine practice of the masters and the real appearances of things."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Still, however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope and all the wonders which the telescope discovers"

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Whatever be his subject he never fails to fill the imagination."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"With Asiatic vices stored thy mind, / But left their virtues and thine own behind, / And, having truck'd thy soul, brought home the fee, / To tempt the poor to sell himself to thee?"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"Then thro' her stores shall active mem'ry rove."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"If this be not done, the Artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning, by a cold consideration of those animated first thoughts which proceeded, not perhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit) but from the fullness of his mind, enriched with all the copious sto...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1788

"Hence at each sound imagination glows; / Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows; / Melting it flows, pure, numerous, strong and clear, / And fills the impassioned heart and lulls the harmonious ear."

— Collins, William (1721-1759)

Date: 1788

"Well-tutor'd Learning, from his books / Dismiss'd with grave, not haughty looks, / Their order on his shelves exact, / Not more harmonious or compact / Than that, to which he keeps confined / The various treasures of his mind."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)