Date: 1790
"But, the region of passion is a land of despotism, where reason exercises but a mock jurisdiction; and is continually forced to submit to an arbitrary tyrant, who, rejecting her fixed and temperate laws, is guided only by the dangerous impulse of his own violent and uncontroulable wishes."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1791, 1806
"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1792
"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1793
Corporal punishment closes all "wholsome avenues of mind ... and on every side we see them guarded with a train of disgraceful passions, hatred, revenge, despotism, cruelty, hypocrisy, conspiracy and cowardice."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name."
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: 1795
"Even there the passions reign; but they rove through the mind like murmuring, winds through barren and gloomy regions."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: February 2, 1796
"Her head's like the island, folks tell on, / Which nothing but monkies can dwell on"
preview | full record— Hoare, Prince (1755-1834)
Date: 1797
"Light of the world, whose cheering ray / Illumes the realms of mind"
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)