Date: 1767, 1784

"This principle / In female minds a feebler empire holds, / Opposing less the specious arguments / For milder rule, and freedom's popular theme."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1768

"Let me, Reason, own thy force: / Though thou totter'st on thy throne, / Let me call thee still my own"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1768

A beloved may "o'ercome" a lover's "yielding heart" and fix "her empire there"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: w. 1766, 1768

"And reason fixed her empire in my breast."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1770

The master-passion may be concealed "but on great occasions,... It will break forth, and loudly tell the world / What fermentation often works the soul"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1770, 1806

"Nor pride nor fickleness could claim / The empire of his mind."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: w. prior to April 1770; 1785, 1837, 1875

"The groves of Kew, however misapplied / To serve the purposes of lust and pride, / Were, by the greater monarch's care, designed / A place of conversation for the mind; / Where solitude and silence should remain, / And conscience keep her sessions and arraign."

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

Date: 1772

"With that strong master of our frame, / The inexorable judge within / What can be done?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1772

"Long I every means have tried / To subdue the inbred ill; / Still I am not sanctified, / Rules my ruling passion still."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1764, 1773

"Such is my theme, which means to prove, / That tho' we drink, or game, or love, / As that or this is most in fashion, / Precedence is our ruling passion."

— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)