Date: 1735, 1763

"Our lives like his in one smooth current flow, / Nor swell'd with tempest, nor too calmly slow, / Whilst he like some great sage of Rome or Greece, / Shall calm each rising doubt and speak us peace, / Correct each thought, each wayward wish controul, / And stamp with every virtue all the soul."

— Melmoth, William, the younger (bap. 1710, d. 1799)

Date: 1735

"Thought works and ends, and dares afresh begin, / So whirpools pour out Streams, and suck them in;"

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1735-6

"No turbid passions in her breast ferment."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735

"God gave us Reason ... A faithful guide to comfort and to save, / Till the mind floats, like Peter on the wave."

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1736

"Infuse a little Wit into the Scull, / Which never fails to make a mighty Fool; / Two Drams of Faith; a Tun of Doubting next; / Let all be with the Dregs of Reason mixt: / When, in his Mind, these jarring Seeds are sown, / He'll censure all Things, but approve of none."

— Duck, Stephen (1705-1756)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"As Years advance, th'abated Soul in most / Sinks to low Ebb, in second Childhood lost;"

— Hughes, Jabez (1685-1731)

Date: 1737

"My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own faults at first view; as when a stream shows the dirt at its bottom, it shows also the transparency of the water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"It is with narrow-soul'd People as with narrow-neck'd Bottles: The less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)