Date: 1741

"I [the mind] did but step out, on some weighty affairs, / To visit last night, my good friends in the stars, / When, before I was got half as high as the moon, / You despatched Pain and Languor to hurry me down; / Vi & Armis they seized me, in midst of my flight, / And shut me in caverns as dark...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1747

"In Vain I strive with Female Art, / To hide the Motions of my Heart; / My Eyes my secret Flame declare, / And Damon reads his Triumph there."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1746; December 17, 1747 [actually January, 1748]

"No more to fabled names confin’d, / To Thee! Supreme, all-perfect mind, / My thoughts direct their flight: / Wisdom’s thy gift, and all her force / From Thee deriv’d, unchanging source / Of intellectual light!"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1752

"Recall your wandring Thoughts; reflect upon the Dishonour you will bring upon yourself, by persisting in such unjustifiable Sentiments."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1752

A "Thought suddenly darted into her Mind, worthy those ingenious Books which gave it Birth."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1753

"We often see that to reverse this boasted constancy is the work of but a single minute,--and then in vain their past professions recoil upon their minds;--in vain the idea of the forsaken fair haunts them in nightly visions."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1758

"Check not the flow of sweet fraternal love, / By Heav'n's high King in bounty giv'n, / Thy stubborn heart to soften and improve, / Thy earth-clad spirit to refine, / And gradual raise to love divine, / And wing its soaring flight to Heav'n!"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1759

"From the very kind and warm Expressions of fatherly Fondness in this Letter, a small Ray of Hope darted into Lady Dellwyn's Mind."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1762

"Ne’er did thy Voice assume a Master’s Pow’r, / Nor force Assent to what thy Precepts taught; / But bid my independent Spirit soar, / In all the Freedom of unfett’red Thought"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762

"Pure from th' eternal Source of Being came / That Ray divine that lights the human Frame: / Yet oft, forgetful of it's heavenly Birth, / It sinks obscur'd beneath the Weight of the Earth: / Mechanic Pow'rs retard it's Flight, and hence / The Storms of Passion, and the Clouds of Sense: / 'Tis Lif...

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)