Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"Because these Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1787

Thoughts may run all in one channel

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1787

Money may be a ruling passion

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1787

"Fat is foul weather--dims the fancy's sight"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1787

"Your heavy fat, I will maintain, / Is perfect birdlime of the brain; / And, as to goldfinches the birdlime clings-- / Fat holds ideas by the legs and wings."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1787

"Fat flattens the most brilliant thoughts, / Like the buff-stop on harpsichords, or spinets-- / Muffling their pretty little tuneful throats, / That would have chirp'd away like linnets."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788

"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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

"Strong Genius, from whose forge of thought / Forms rise, to quick perfection wrought"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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)