Date: 1762-3
"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1763
"Try, thou State-Juggler, ev'ry paltry art, / Ransack the inmost closet of my heart / Swear Thou'rt my Friend; by that base oath make way / Into my breast, and flatter to betray."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1764
"Have I well weigh'd the great, the noble part / I'm now to play? have I explored my heart, / That labyrinth of fraud, that deep, dark cell, / Where, unsuspected, e'en by me, may dwell / Ten thousand follies?"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1764, 1773
"Restore thy dear idea to my breast, / The rich deposit shall the shrine secure."
preview | full record— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)
Date: 1764, 1773
"Heav'n search my soul, and if thro' all its cells / Lurk the pernicious drop of pois'nous guile; / Full on my fenceless head its phial'd wrath / May fate exhaust"
preview | full record— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)
Date: 1764, 1773
"In cloister'd state let selfish sages dwell, / Proud that their heart is narrow as their cell!"
preview | full record— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)
Date: 1767, 1784
"The curious structure of these visual orbs, / The windows of the mind; substance how clear, / Aqueous, or crystalline! through which the soul, / As thro' a glass, all outward things surveys."
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1767, 1784
"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"
preview | full record— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)
Date: 1768
"All my heart is open wide, / Every bar is thrown aside"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)