Date: 1780

"But O! how rare benignant Virtue springs / In the blank bosom of despotic kings!"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1780

"My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1781

"[A]ll you've said / Seems to wear Reason's stamp."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Could I thus stamp with guilt, sensations sprung / From thought most delicate"?

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Or when the burnish'd car by Phoebus roll'd, / Darts more intense it's rays of liquid gold, / Beneath some ivy-fringed cave reclined, / Fancy's bright visions rushing on thy mind, / With spirits bland, nursed by the genial powers, / Soothest with melodious notes the sultry hours!"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781

"But as a Bow that's always bent / Hath soon its force elastic spent; / So, lest the over-burthen'd brain / (Which can't too great a weight sustain) / Should not so much rich food digest, / 'Tis sometimes good to give it rest."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781

"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"He [Young] plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind / To stamp a lasting image of the mind!"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

Date: 1782

"'Tis granted, and no plainer truth appears, / Our most important are our earliest years. / The mind impressible and soft, with ease / Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees, / And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clue /That education gives her, false or true."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)