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: 1768

"Hope and fear alternate rising, / Strive for empire o'er my heart."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1768

"When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she--you had reason--the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse th...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

One may gain "absolute empire over the mind" of another

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"And still my soul they [cares] hold in pain, / Their cruel empire to maintain."

— Fergusson, Robert (1750-1774)

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

"This Night we'd fix her [the Muse of Comedy's] Empire in your Hearts."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1770, 1806

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

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)