Date: 1761

"Does Conscience, that just Judge, confirm my sentence? / There I am clear."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1762-3

"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: January, 1764; 1774

Genius "Turns rebel to dame reason's throne / And holds no judgment like his own."

— Lloyd, Robert (bap. 1733, d. 1764)

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: 1776

"Oh! jealousy, / Thou tyrant of the mind."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1777

"His heart, for a moment, revolted at the idea of seduction; but he soon silenced the unwelcome monitor."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1788

"When sovereign Reason from her throne is hurl'd, / And with her all the subject senses whirl'd, / From sweet HUMANITY, the nurse of grief, / Even thy deep woes, O Phrenzy! find relief."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1790

"Love comes to the bosom under the gentle forms of esteem, of sympathy, of confidence: we listen with dangerous pleasure to the seducing accents of his voice, till he lifts the fatal veil which concealed him from our view, and reigns a tyrant in the soul. Reason is then an oracle no longer consul...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1793

"Law may be supposed to have been constructed in the tranquil serenity of the soul, a suitable monitor to check the inflamed mind with which the recent memory of ills might induce us to proceed to the exercise of coercion"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

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

"The dissipation of Blandford, and the disputes of Portsmouth, consumed the hours which were not employed in the field; and amid the perpetual hurry of an inn, a barrack, or a guard-room, all literary ideas were banished from my mind."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)