Date: 1720
"Choice flow'rs of Grace within thy Soul doth spring, / Zion's beautious Birds their chearfull Notes do sing; / The charming Voice of the dear Turtle's heard, / And ev'ry rav'nous Bird hath disappear'd."
preview | full record— Pennecuik, Alexander (d. 1730)
Date: First performed February 17, 1720.
"The Threats of Death are nothing; / Tho' thy last Message shook his Soul, as Winds / On the bleak Hills bend down some lofty Pine; / Yet still he held his Root; till I found Means, / Abating somewhat of thy first Demand, / If not to make him wholly ours, at least / To gain sufficient to our End."
preview | full record— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)
Date: 1721, 1722
"On the contrary, the countries of the Mahometans every day become deserts, from an opinion, which, all holy as it is, yet is not without very hurtful consequences, when it is rooted in the mind."
preview | full record— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Date: 1722
"Zeno, and his scholars the Stoicks, took an odd fancy, that the passions were not interwoven with the constitution of man, and so were no part of his nature, but the blemishes and vicious excrescencies of the soul, and therefore ought to be entirely cut off; noxious weeds, that poison'd the mind...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1722
"Consider; Gwendolen, my lasting Passion; / A Passion, that, through Time, takes deeper Root; / A Love, that, spight of Absence, hourly grows; / In spight even of Despair:--Yet, will I not / Despair; since Fortune favours thus my Hopes."
preview | full record— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)
Date: Monday, April 13. 1724.
"If, according to the Maxim in the Forehead of my Paper, it was my immediate Office to Teach that young Spark better Things, which I had then a great Inclination to Do, only for Fear of discovering my self, I would begin by Weeding out of his Mind that rank Conceit, which he entertains of his Par...
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1726, 1775
"Thro' ev'ry tender tube they rove, / In finer spirits strike the brain; / Wind quick thro' ev'ry fibrous grove, / And seek, thro' pores, the heart again."
preview | full record— Savage, Richard (1697/8-1743)
Date: 1727, 1787
"Oak was his heart, his breast with steel / Thrice mail'd, that first the brittle keel / Committed to the murtherous deep."
preview | full record— Welsted, Leonard (1688-1747)
Date: 1727
Young gentlemen may be "wholly neglected and left to branch forth into numberless Follies, like a rich Field uncultivated, that abounds in nothing but tall Weeds and gaudy scentless Flowers"
preview | full record— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)
Date: 1727
Women have the same "Passions and Inclinations [as Men], which when let loose without a Curb, grow wild and untameable, defy all Laws and Rules, and can be subdued by nothing but what they are seldom Mistresses of"
preview | full record— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)