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)

Date: 1751

"If any Man hath found out a Kind of Motive which doth not affect himself, he hath made a deeper Investigation into the 'Springs, Weights, and Balances' of the human Heart, than I can pretend to."

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1752

A puppet may be "compell'd by secret Springs" just as an engine "moves with Motions not its own"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: 1757

"I only told him civilly, Past three o'clock and a cloudy morning!-- [...] --when, heyday! says he, (there he stands, let 'en deny it if he can) and coming up to me--what have we here?-- a human Clock!--a very odd kind of Repeater upon my soul!--one of the hours 'egad strolling about, in a...

— Bacon, Phanuel (1700-1783)

Date: 1758, 1781

"Hence then the Cause of all Defects is seen, / one wrong Movement spoils the whole Machine."

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Figuratively speaking, dear Toby, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can't prevent the shock--at least it imposes upon our s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time 'tis of so slight a frame and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1763

"After all, are we not a little in the machine style, not to be able to withdraw our love when our esteem is at an end?"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1777

"Col. Dormer, though he knew the human heart, had never yet thought of taking his nieces in more active scenes of life: he had fallen into the common mistake of people past the meridian of their days, who, feeling tranquillity their greatest good, do not sufficiently reflect that it is insipid at...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)