Date: 1689
The passion ambition "'Tis the minds Wolf, a strange Disease, / That ev'n Saciety can't appease"
preview | full record— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)
Date: 1725-6
"'Tis hard, he cries, to bring to sudden sight / Ideas that have wing'd their distant flight."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), Broome, W. and Fenton, E.
Date: 1727
"Some, with a dry and barren Brain, / Poor Rogues! like costive Lap-Dogs strain; / While others with a Flux of Wit, / The Reader and their Friends besh**t."
preview | full record— Somervile, William (1675-1742)
Date: 1741
"For Thou who, faulty, wrong'st another's Fame, / Howe'er so great and dignify'd thy Name, / The Muse shall drag thee forth to publick Shame; / Pluck the fair Feathers from thy Swan-skin Heart, / And shew thee black and guileful as thou art."
preview | full record— Miller, James (1704-1744)
Date: 1742
"But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, / Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found. / As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel, / So dies in human hearts the thought of death."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744
"Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour / Of desperation, by what Fury's aid, / In what infernal posture of the soul, / All hell invited, and all hell in joy / At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, / Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme / Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown, / And...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1755
The "busy Statesman's mind" may grow putrid on the throne of power so that "Fresh vices spring up ev'ry hour; / As in dead corses serpents breed, / And loathsome, on corruption feed"
preview | full record— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)
Date: 1762-3
"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762
"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)