Date: 1730

"Learning! that mazy Cobweb of the Brain, / That renders all the Avenues / Of Truth, that in itself is plain, / Impervious and abstruse, / Perplex'd and intricate, / By that false Engine of our Mind, Debate."

— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)

Date: 1733-4

"What if the head, the eye or ear repin'd / To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; / Reason's comparing balance rules the whole."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. 1741

"While breath shall animate this frail machine, / My heart sincere, which never flatt'ry knew, / Shall consecrate its warmest wish to you."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1743

"Though grey our heads, our thoughts and aims are green; / Like damaged clocks, whose hand and bell dissent; / Folly sings six, while Nature points at twelve."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"That thought is the machine, / The grand machine that heaves us from the dust, / And rears us into men!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Passion's fierce illapse / Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies / Of daily impulse keeps the elastic powers / Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew / By that collision all the fine machine: / Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees / Incumbering, choak at last what heaven design'd ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"There is, I grant, a triumph of the pulse, / A dance of spirits, a mere froth of joy, / Our thoughtless Agitation's idle child, / That mantles high, that sparkles, and expires, / Leaving the soul more vapid than before; / An animal ovation! such as holds / No commerce with our reason, but subsis...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1747

"Something there is within this strange machine, / Which elevates my mind, and makes me dive / Too deep in fate"

— Gilbert, Thomas (bap. 1713, d. 1766)

Date: October 1750, 1752, 1791

"The less the body to the view, / The soul (like springs in closer durance pent) / Is all exertion, ever new, / Unceasing, unextinguish'd, and unspent"

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)