Date: 1718

"Mature, if not improv'd, by Time / Up to the Heart She loves to climb: / From thence, compell'd by Craft and Age, / She makes the Head her latest Stage."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"But I can call to my Assistance / Proximity (mark that!) and Distance: / Can prove, that all Things, on Occasion, / Love Union, and desire Adhesion; / That Alma merely is a Scale; / And Motives, like the Weights, prevail."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"If neither Side turn down or up, / With Loss or Gain, with Fear or Hope; / The Balance always would hang ev'n, / Like Mah'met's Tomb, 'twixt Earth and Heav'n."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"Alma, They strenuously maintain, / Sits Cock-horse on Her Throne, the Brain; / And from that Seat of Thought dispenses / Her Sov'reign Pleasure to the Senses."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1720

Justice, the "Queen of Virtues" may poize the mind in "equal balance" so that "All different Graces soon will enter, / Like Lines concurrent to their Center"

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. 1721 [published 1907]

"And if again, pray mind, Thy head and Mine / Are form'd and stuff'd quite diff'rent from each other; / *I n'er shal understand one single line,/ Thô I shou'd read thy Folio ten times over."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. 1707, published 1728-9

Dulness is "the safe Opiate of the Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1728, 1729, 1736

"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead;] i. e. A trifling head, and a contracted heart,as the poet, book 4. describes the accomplished Sons of Dulness; of whom this is only an Image, or Scarecrow, and so stuffed out with these corresponding materials."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733

"I love to pour out all myself, as plain / As downright Shippen, or as old Montagne. / In them, as certain to be lov'd as seen, / The Soul stood forth, nor kept a Thought within; / In me what Spots (for Spots I have) appear, / Will prove at least the Medium must be clear."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"On Life's vast ocean diversely we sail, / Reason the card, but Passion is the gale."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)