Date: 1743
"Mine is a true English Heart; it is an equal Stranger to the Heat of the Equator and the Frost of the Pole."
preview | full record— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)
Date: 1745
"At first his Passions burst / Quick as the Lightning's Flash: but in his Breast / Honour and Justice dwell--Trust me, to Reason / He will return."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Date: 1752
"Assist me, Furies, with your hellish Aid, / Nor let the Tyrant Conscience more invade; / Since I am stain'd with Blood, thro' Blood I'll wade."
preview | full record— Gentleman, Francis (1728-1784)
Date: 1753
"A thousand Fiends were in that Bosom, and all let loose to tempt me--I had resisted else."
preview | full record— Moore, Edward (1712-1757)
Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757
"Within my bosom reigns another lord; / Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself."
preview | full record— Home, John (1722-1808)
Date: 1761
"Does Conscience, that just Judge, confirm my sentence? / There I am clear."
preview | full record— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)
Date: 1763
"I know not, madam, what I either hear or see, a thousand things are crowding on my imagination; while, like one just wakened from a dream, I doubt which is reality, which delusion."
preview | full record— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)
Date: w. 1764, published 1820
"O Peace of mind, thou lovely guest, / Thou softest soother of the breast, / Dispense thy balmy store."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1766
"My Heart is my own / And a Stranger to Care"
preview | full record— Carey, George Saville (1743-1807)
Date: 1767
"[I]ndeed, in her more serious moments, which are but few, she, perhaps, gives me an hearing, when all at once a crowd of gayer thoughts rush on, and kill at once the hopes wherewith I was elated a few minutes before"
preview | full record— O'Keeffe, John (1747-1833)