Date: 1766

"Fancy leads the fetter'd senses / Captives to her fond controul; / Merit may have rich pretences, / But 'tis Fancy fires the soul."

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1772

"My Brain's disturb'd; alas! alas! I rave; / What can I do? a poor forsaken Slave! / Like Birds, that spend their little idle Rage, / And, fruitless, mourn, indignant of their Cage, / From Thought to Thought, my fluttering Spirits rove, / Betray'd to Bondage, and, ah! lost to Love."

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811) [Editor]

Date: 1773

"Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, / Till some lov'd objects strikes her wand'ring eyes, / Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, / And soft captivity involves the mind."

— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)

Date: 1778

"But, as an author of great fame / (I can't just recollect his name) / Has somewhere said, who seeks to bind / By force, or fraud, a woman's mind, / With locks, and bolts, and bars, and chains, / But gets his labour for his pains."

— Moore, Sir John Henry (1756-1780)

Date: 1784

"Had I the dread necessity explained, / That with resistless force my freedom chained; / Tore the sweet bands, by virtuous passion tied, / And stampt our constancy with parricide."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1788

"See the fond links of feeling nature broke! / The fibres twisting round a parent's heart, / Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: June, 1788

"Minds are never to be sold"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)