Date: 1763, 1767

"The guardian genius of his dawning thought, / Who wide disclos'd to wisdom's sacred ray / The eager inlets of his ample mind, / And pour'd upon each opening mental cell, / The virtue-forming scientific beam / With letter'd and religious radiance fill'd, / The fair expanses of his princely soul, ...

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1773

"Yet of etherial temper are their souls, / And in their veins the tide of honour rolls; / And valour kindles there the hero's flame, / Contempt of death, and thirst of martial flame. / And pity melts the sympathizing breast, / Ah! fatal virtue!—for the brave distrest."

— Day, Thomas (1748-1789)

Date: 1775

"My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine; / And in my breast the imperfect joys expire."

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1777

"For I never will believe that envy, though passed through all the moral strainers, can be refined into a virtuous emulation, or lying improved into an agreeable turn for innocent invention."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: April, 1783

"And we must be content to rest upon the surface without straining to pierce into causes which are hidden from us, and which have hitherto mocked the attempts of impatient philosophers. We should resolve to wait till a longer fathom line is granted us, and then we shall be able to sound depths wh...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1788

There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)