Date: March 13, 1727

"Must these like empty shadows pass, / Or forms reflected from a glass? / Or mere chimeras in the mind, / That fly, and leave no marks behind?"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1727

"Some, with a dry and barren Brain, / Poor Rogues! like costive Lap-Dogs strain; / While others with a Flux of Wit, / The Reader and their Friends besh**t."

— Somervile, William (1675-1742)

Date: 1727

"To me be Nature's volume broad display'd; / And to peruse its all instructing page, / Or, haply catching inspiration thence, / Some easy passage, raptured, to translate, / My sole delight; as through the falling glooms / Pensive I stray, or with the rising dawn / On Fancy's eagle-wing excursive ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1727

"Thus when the villain crams his chest, / Gold is the canker of the breast"

— Gay, John (1685-1732)

Date: 1728

"But thro' the Heart / Should Jealousy it's Venom once diffuse, / 'Tis then delightful Misery no more, / But Agony unmixt, incessant Rage, / Corroding every Thought, and blasting all / The Paradise of Love."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"Gold is the Load-stone of the Great, / And vulgar Souls must catch the glitt'ring Bait."

— Pattison, William (1706-1727)

Date: 1728, 1729, 1736

"She form'd this image of well-bodied air, / With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head, / A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead, / And empty words she gave, and sounding strain, / But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1730

"Whate'er we see, whate'er we feel, / Does all the God reveal, / Confirms the Grand Mistake / Of Those, whose Eagle-Thoughts would make / His Seat so wondrous high, / Beyond the Limits of the Sky, /Out beyond the World's wide Sphear, /And fix his Habitation there."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)

Date: 1730

"Whether we send our Reason's piercing Rays / Beneath the Great, unbounded Deep, / Where Storms and Tempests sleep, / Whether unrein'd Imagination strays / Thro' the black, Howling Desart's pathless Ways, / The Deep and Howling Wilderness declare / The Omnipresent Godhead there."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"With swift wing / O'er land and sea imagination roams; / Or truth, divinely breaking on his mind, / Elates his being, and unfolds his powers; / Or in his breast heroic virtue burns."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)