Date: 1781

"But as a Bow that's always bent / Hath soon its force elastic spent; / So, lest the over-burthen'd brain / (Which can't too great a weight sustain) / Should not so much rich food digest, / 'Tis sometimes good to give it rest."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781

"Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind / To stamp a lasting image of the mind!"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

Date: 1782

"'Tis granted, and no plainer truth appears, / Our most important are our earliest years. / The mind impressible and soft, with ease / Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees, / And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clue /That education gives her, false or true."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"In life's first season, when the fever's flame / Shrunk to deformity his shrivell'd frame, / And turn'd each fairer image in his brain / To blank confusion and her crazy train."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

The Muse, like Cato, "Well [...] supplies her want of softer art / By all the sterling treasures of the heart."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"How little hints awak'd the large design, / And subtle Fancy spun her variegated line?"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay! / May snatch the richest seeds of Verse away; / Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art / Thro' the close texture of the cleanest heart, / May, if they haply have begun to shoot, / With partial mischief wound the sick'ning root; / Or Avarice, the ...

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"By pure exalted Sentiment she draws / From Judgment's steady voice no light applause."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

"Man's heart had been impenetrably seal'd / Like theirs that cleave the flood or graze the field, / Had not his Maker's all-bestowing hand / Given him a soul"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)