Date: 1746

"With inward view, / Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns / Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance, / The obedient phantoms vanish or appear; / Compound, divide, and into order shift, / Each to his rank, from plain perception up / To the fair forms of Fancy's fleeting train."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1747

"Hither beauteous Goddess move, / Leave a while th' Idalian Grove; / Once more to my transported Breast, / Come a mild, a grateful Guest; / There confirm thy pleasing Reign, / Free from Cares, and free from Pain."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1748, 1749

"If reason is the slave of depraved, or distracted sense, how then can it be expected, that at that time it should be governor?"

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1749

"In return to which, Conscience, like a good Lawyer, attempted to distinguish between an absolute Breach of Trust, as here where the Goods were delivered, and a bare Concealment of what was found, as in the former Case. Avarice presently treated this with Ridicule, called it a Distinction without...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Saturday, September 15, 1750

"The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as kings have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powerful to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751, 1791

"The passions are a num'rous crowd, / Imperious, positive, and loud: / Curb these licentious sons of strife; / Hence chiefly rise the storms of life: / If they grow mutinous, and rave, / They are thy masters, thou their slave."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752

"Assist me, Furies, with your hellish Aid, / Nor let the Tyrant Conscience more invade; / Since I am stain'd with Blood, thro' Blood I'll wade."

— Gentleman, Francis (1728-1784)

Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757

"Within my bosom reigns another lord; / Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1759

"The different passions and appetites, the natural subjects of this ruling principle, but which are so apt to rebel against their master, he reduced to two different classes or orders."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Refine you Spirit, with assiduous Care, / From ev'ry vicious Weed, your Virtue clear; / Virtue, and Vice, grow in the human Mind, / Like Corn, and Weeds, together closely join'd; / Extirpate Self-conceit, the worst of Weeds, / That checks the Growth of intellectual Seeds; / Each rebel Passion, ...

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)