Date: w. 1740, 1748

"The flannel Crew / With cunning joy the fond repentance view, / Pronounce Him bless'd, his miracles proclaim, / Teach the slight croud t' adore his hallow'd name, / Exalt his praise above the Saints of old, / And coin his sinking conscience into Gold."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1749

"When she, with all the Magnet's Pow'r, / Draws to her sweet enchanting Bow'r / Heroic Souls, and Hearts of Steel."

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1752

"His Hope revives, fresh Courage steels his Heart."

— Browne, Moses (1706-1787)

Date: 1752, 1790

The gentleman "To Figg and Broughton ... commits his breast, / To steel it to the fashionable test

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)

Date: 1753

"When Flora sweeps the Table with a Vole, / What Breast so steel'd as Grief can not invade, / To see the Havock on her Beautys made!"

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1755

"Malice away, with all her Scorpions, creeps, / And Marius, iron-hearted Marius, weeps."

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1756

"A war of passions in their breasts they feel / As the muse fires, who have not hearts of Steel."

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1759, performed 1776

"Steel then, ye Powers of heav'n, / Steel my firm soul with your own fortitude, / Free from alloy of passion."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1760-7

"Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"There was the great king Aldrovandus, and Bosphorus, and Capadocius, and Dardanus, and Pontus, and Asius,--to say nothing of the iron-hearted Charles the XIIth, whom the Countess of K***** herself could make nothing of"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)