Date: 1742

"Through chinks, styled organs, dim Life peeps at light; / Death bursts the' involving cloud, and all is day; / All eye, all ear, the disembodied power."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"His understanding 'scapes the common cloud / Of fumes arising from a boiling breast."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1746, 1753

"As in pale churchyards, gleam'd by silent night, / Shou'd some cross'd spectre shade the moon's dim light, / Shudd'ry, the back'ning blood, revolving swift, / Cloggs the press'd heart--stretch'd fibres fail to lift: / Lost, in doubt's hard'ning frost--stopt motion lies, / While sense climbs, gra...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1749

"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"Soon as the guilty passion is allay'd, / The green and morbid colour of our souls / Is chang'd to virgin white; a gentle breeze / Of pity springs within us."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: September 1762; 1774

"And every Moralist will find / A ruling passion in the mind: / Which, tho' pent up and barricado'd / Like winds, where Æolus bravado'd; / Like them, will sally from their den, / And raise a tempest now and then; / Unhinge dame Prudence from her plan, / And ruffle all the world of man."

— Lloyd, Robert (bap. 1733, d. 1764)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1787

"Fat is foul weather--dims the fancy's sight"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Like a snow-ball, the mind, fraught with peace in its prime, / Moves swiftly adown the steep shelvings of Time; / Accumulates filth from Society's sons, / And strengthens and hardens its coat as it runs; / Till habit on habit is negligent laid, / And the object appears motley, vile, and ill-made...

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)