Date: 1788
"When sovereign Reason from her throne is hurl'd, / And with her all the subject senses whirl'd, / From sweet HUMANITY, the nurse of grief, / Even thy deep woes, O Phrenzy! find relief."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1790
"Love comes to the bosom under the gentle forms of esteem, of sympathy, of confidence: we listen with dangerous pleasure to the seducing accents of his voice, till he lifts the fatal veil which concealed him from our view, and reigns a tyrant in the soul. Reason is then an oracle no longer consul...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1793
"Law may be supposed to have been constructed in the tranquil serenity of the soul, a suitable monitor to check the inflamed mind with which the recent memory of ills might induce us to proceed to the exercise of coercion"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)
"The dissipation of Blandford, and the disputes of Portsmouth, consumed the hours which were not employed in the field; and amid the perpetual hurry of an inn, a barrack, or a guard-room, all literary ideas were banished from my mind."
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1797
"'Behold, what is woman!' said he--'The slave of her passions, the dupe of her senses! When pride and revenge speak in her breast, she defies obstacles, and laughs at crimes!'" "Assail but her senses; let music, for instance, touch some feeble chord of her heart, and echo to her fancy, and lo! al...
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)
Date: 1805
"Alas! when ev'ry Muse is fled, / How wretched He who writes for bread! / Who, when the joyous years are flown, / And Reason totters on her throne, / And Fancy fails, and Nature tires, / And Fame herself no more inspires, / And ev'n the sweet return of Spring / No more can make the Poet sing, / T...
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1807
"Yes, 't is too late,--now Reason guides / The mind, sole judge in all debate."
preview | full record— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)
Date: 1809
"Still may she [Fancy] rule the manly mind; / Her sweetest magic still impart / To soften, not subdue, the heart: / Still may she warm the chosen breast, /Not as the sovereign, but the guest."
preview | full record— Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850)
Date: 1810
"Had Bethlehem's star, of humble swains the guide; / Of souls, unclouded with pedantick pride; / On thee benighted, beamed, with friendly ray, / With all the light of evangelick day; / Ideas, in thy brain, had held no dance / Of anarchy, thou citizen of France!"
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: 1820
"Yet am I king over myself, and rule / The torturing and conflicting throngs within, / As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)