Date: 1795

"You should not soften, but steel my heart!"

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1795

"Still to be serious, Pitt, before we part: / Let Mercy melt the mill-stone of thy heart."

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

Date: 1796

"There lux'ry spreads profusion wide, / To glut the iron breast of pride!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1796

"Wouldst thou again with amorous rage
Inflame my bosom? Steeled by age, Vain boy, to pierce my breast thine arrows are too weak."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: 1796

"The climate's heat, 'tis well known, operates with no small influence upon the constitutions of the Spanish ladies: but the most abandoned would have thought it an easier task to inspire with passion the marble statue of St. Francis than the cold and rigid heart of the immaculate Ambrosio."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"Such hardships may steel the mind and body against the injuries of fortune; but my timid reserve was astonished by the crowd and tumult of the school; the want of strength and activity disqualified me for the sports of the play-field; nor have I forgotten how often in the year forty-six I was re...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1796

"Low in a humble Preface authors kneel; / In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: w. 1787, 1797

"They only who are curst with breasts of steel / Can mock the foibles of surviving love"

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1797, 1810

"For pressure but new-springs the generous mind; /As gold by Vulcan's torture is refined."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: July 1797, 1810

"See, while his thunders iron hearts assail, / The tyrants of each hemisphere turn pale!"

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)