Date: 1742
"Through chinks, styled organs, dim Life peeps at light; / Death bursts the' involving cloud, and all is day; / All eye, all ear, the disembodied power."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1745
"His understanding 'scapes the common cloud / Of fumes arising from a boiling breast."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: November 6, 1746
"She [Desdemona] saw, as the truly valuable Part of the Sex do, Othello's Visage in his Mind; she was too innocent and resigned to be guarded against the Wiles of envious and designing Men; and thus, while basking in the Sunshine of Love, and sporting in the Splendor of its divine Emanations, she...
preview | full record— Horsley, William (attrib.)
Date: 1746, 1753
"As in pale churchyards, gleam'd by silent night, / Shou'd some cross'd spectre shade the moon's dim light, / Shudd'ry, the back'ning blood, revolving swift, / Cloggs the press'd heart--stretch'd fibres fail to lift: / Lost, in doubt's hard'ning frost--stopt motion lies, / While sense climbs, gra...
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1749
"Yet should thy Soul indulge the gen'rous Heat, / Till captive Science yields her last Retreat / Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, / And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; / Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, / Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; / Should temptin...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1760-7
"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1761
"Soon as the guilty passion is allay'd, / The green and morbid colour of our souls / Is chang'd to virgin white; a gentle breeze / Of pity springs within us."
preview | full record— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)
Date: 1761, 1765
"Labour and Want (unhospitable twain) / Chill not the current in Life's salient vein; / Nor damp the spirits, else of sprightly cast, / Nor check the nobler passions of the breast; / Nor blunt the fine Sensation's tender edge, / Which man's chief pride philosophers allege. / Thus some fair ...
preview | full record— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)
Date: September 1762; 1774
"And every Moralist will find / A ruling passion in the mind: / Which, tho' pent up and barricado'd / Like winds, where Æolus bravado'd; / Like them, will sally from their den, / And raise a tempest now and then; / Unhinge dame Prudence from her plan, / And ruffle all the world of man."
preview | full record— Lloyd, Robert (bap. 1733, d. 1764)
Date: 1770
A judge may sit serene "Above all mists of passion"
preview | full record— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)