Date: 1742

"Then welcome, Death, thy dreaded harbingers, / Age and Disease: Disease, though long my guest,-- / That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life; / Which, pluck'd a little more, will toll the bell / That calls my few friends to my funeral."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone / To which the new-born mind's harmonious powers / At first were strung?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Nor thence partakes / Fresh pleasure only: for the attentive mind, / By this harmonious action on her powers / Becomes herself harmonious: wont so oft / In outward things to meditate the charm / Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home / To find a kindred order, to exert / Within herself this ele...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Whence is this effect, / This kindred power of such discordant things? /Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone / To which the new-born mind's harmonious powers / At first were strung? Or rather from the links / Which artful custom twines around her frame?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd / By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch / Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string / Consenting, sounded through the warbling air / Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand / To certain species of external things, / Attune the finer organs of the ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"So the glad impulse of congenial powers, / Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form, / The grace of motion, or the bloom of light, / Thrills through imagination's tender frame, / From nerve to nerve: all naked and alive / They catch the spreading rays: till now the soul / At length discloses...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thou, smiling queen of every tuneful breast, / Indulgent Fancy from the fruitful banks / Of Avon, whence thy rosy fingers cull / Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf / Where Shakespeare lies, be present."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1747-8

"A man who is gross in a woman's company ought to be knocked down with a club: for, like so many musical instruments, touch but a single wire, and the dear souls are sensible all over "

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: Tuesday, November 20, 1750

"Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sententious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely because they have somewhere heard them, because they have nothing else to say, or because they think veneration gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no id...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"Another Source of mutual Misapprehension on this Subject hath been 'the Introduction of metaphorical Expressions instead of proper ones.' Nothing is so common among the Writers on Morality, as 'the Harmony of Virtue'—'the Proportion of Virtue.'"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)