Date: 1775-7

"It was this creature which confirmed me in the belief, that the partition betwixt instinct and reason was totally transparent; and that the animal and rational saw through very similar mirrors."

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

Date: 1776-1789

"The emperor Maximus, who had advanced as far as Ravenna, to secure that important place, and to hasten the military preparations, beheld the event of the war in the more faithful mirror of reason and policy."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1777

"Parents may, perhaps, paint it to themselves: they may see (through the mirror of a sympathetic fancy) the poor widow receiving her child from the healing hand of the prophet--a child fresh blooming in the beauties of a second birth."

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

Date: 1777

"As it is the character of Genius to penetrate with a lynx's beam into unfathomable abysses and uncreated worlds, and to see what is not, so it is the property of good sense to distinguish perfectly, and judge accurately what really is."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1781

"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"We now perceive every [idea], as it passes, through a small aperture separately, as in the camera obscura, and this we call time; but at the conclusion of this state we may probably exist in a manner quite different; the window may be thrown open, the whole prospect appear at one view, and all t...

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)

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

"The purity of his intentions, and the uprightness of his principles--the transcript before you will sufficiently establish;--it is a mental mirror, in which you behold the features of the writer's mind, as distinctly as a looking glass reflects, to a young beauty, her cheek of roses, and her eye...

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

Date: 1792

"These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The imagination becomes a camera obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as they really are; while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful scenes, and chastened by rules of art, forms it's pictures, not only from the most admirable parts of nature; but i...

— Gilpin, William (1724-1804)