Date: 1775

The opening heart is warmed byt "kindly cares"

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1775

Women, "like garden-trees," seldom show fruit, "till time has robbed them of the more specious blossom"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1776-1789

"The ancient families of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Cæsars; and, whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible that any idea of hereditary succession should have ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"Well-skill'd / To form the growing soul, and on its young / And opening bud to fix the impression deep / Of every generous thought"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1778

"A thirst for knowledge, which can never be gratified, would not have been implanted; a mind which was to be chained to the earth, would never have been bent on the skies"

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)

Date: 1779, 1781

"A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1780

"Our hearts more free from Faction's Weeds we feel, / But they have loft the Flower of Patriot Zeal"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1781

"In his 'Night Thoughts' he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Pope foresaw the future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"Can we then deem that in those happier lands, / Where every vital energy expands; / Where Thought, the golden harvest of the mind, / Springs into rich luxuriance, unconfin'd; / That in such soils, with mental weeds o'ergrown, / The seeds of Poesy were thinly sown?"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)