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, 1791

"This home philosophy, you know, / Was priz'd some thousand years ago. / Then why abroad a frequent guest? / Why such a stranger to your breast?"

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

Date: 1752, 1791

"Life's records rise on ev'ry side, / And Conscience spreads those volumes wide; / Which faithful registers were brought / By pale-ey'd Fear and busy Thought. / Those faults which artful men conceal, / Stand here engrav'd with pen of steel, / By Conscience, that impartial scribe!"

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

Date: 1754

"Then thus Philantha, in whose breast / Good-nature is a constant guest,"

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1746, 1757

"If Pity be no Stranger to thy Breast, / (As sure it should not to a Breast like thine, / Soft as the Swanny Down!) relenting, hear"

— Thompson, William (bap. 1712, d.c. 1766)

Date: 1757

"Let heav'n-born Mercy ever fill thy Breast, / And Truth be there an ever constant Guest."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758?)

Date: w. 1755-1757, 1768

Unborn ages may crowd on the soul

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1759

"Peaceful virtues" dwell within the "sacred cell" of the heart

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: w. May, 1756; 1761

"For these, if I forget my patron's praise, / While bright ideas dance upon my mind, / Ne'er may these eyes behold auspicious days, / May friends prove faithless, and the Muse unkind."

— Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777)

Date: 1762-3

"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)