Date: 1714

"Well then, I own my Heart has broke your Chains. / Patient I bore the painful Bondage long, / At length my generous Love disdains your Tyranny."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1719-1720, 1725

"You see, my Lord, said he with a Sigh, that I have put it out of her Power to triumph over my Weakness, for I confess my Heart still wears her Chains; but e'er my Eyes or Tongue betray to her the shameful Bondage, these Hands should tear them out."

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

Date: 1776-1789

"In the same manner [says Longinus] as some children always remain pigmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined; thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1788-89

"The former [Platonic philosophy] fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter [Lockean philosophy] clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries he...

— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)

Date: 1788

"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)