Date: 1712

"Can the dissecting Steel the Brain display, / And the august Apartment open lay, / Where this great Queen still chuses to reside / In Intellectual Pomp, and bright Ideal Pride? / Or can the Eye assisted by the Glass / Discern the strait, but hospitable Place, / In which ten thousand Images remai...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1714 [1712, 1717]

"Then gay Ideas crowd the vacant Brain, / While Peers and Dukes, and all their sweeping Train, / And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear, / And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their Ear."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1723

"The Cells, and little Lodgings, Thou canst see / In Mem'ry's Hoards and secret Treasury; / Dost the dark Cave of each Idea spy, / And see'st how rang'd the crouded Lodgers lye; / How some, when beckon'd by the Soul, awake, / While peaceful Rest their uncall'd Neighbours take."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1736, 1737, 1759, 1744, 1771, 1773

"Female youth, left to weak woman's care" are "Strangers to reason and reflection made, / Left to their passions, and by them betrayed; / Untaught the noble end of glorious truth, / Bred to deceive even from earliest youth; / Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize; / Whose mind, a savage was...

— Ingram, Anne [née Howard; other married name Douglas], Viscountess Irwin (c. 1696-1764)

Date: 1757

"Let heav'n-born Mercy ever fill thy Breast, / And Truth be there an ever constant Guest."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758?)

Date: 1773

"Hail to pleasure's frolic train; / Hail to fancy's golden reign; / Festive mirth, and laughter wild, / Free and sportful as the child; / Hope with eager sparkling eyes, / And easy faith, and fond surprise: / Let these, in fairy colours drest, / Forever share my careless breast; / Then, tho' wise...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)