Date: 1781

"Fashion's pert tricks the crowded brain oppress / With all the poor parade of tawdry dress:"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1781

"Oh, I begin to take you--your days--the rusticated remains of a ruined Temple Critic--a smatterer of high life from the scenes of Cibber, which remain upon his imagination, as they do upon the stage, forty years after the real characters are lost"

— Burgoyne, John (1722-1792)

Date: 1781, 1791

"How vainly the tumultuous passions strive / To shake his breast! they claim no empire there"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

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

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

An "scholar, but unwise" "cannot separate the dross / From the pure ore"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Hence rash Belief! may thy wild thoughts again / Ne'er thro the cells of busy fancy rove!"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

"If haply human passions swell, / And shake awhile their peaceful cell, / They strive with idle force"

— 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

"My head and ears confus'd, I find / One cannot here relax the Mind, / In vain she strives to slip her chains, / Law, Law, through all these regions reigns; / So back to Chambers I return, / More Patience, and more Law, to learn."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)