Date: 1778

"But, as an author of great fame / (I can't just recollect his name) / Has somewhere said, who seeks to bind / By force, or fraud, a woman's mind, / With locks, and bolts, and bars, and chains, / But gets his labour for his pains."

— Moore, Sir John Henry (1756-1780)

Date: 1778, 1804

"But when that seal is first imprest, / When the young heart its pain shall try, / From the soft, yielding, trembling breast, / Oft seems the startled soul to fly."

— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)

Date: 1778

If we may judge the inside of fashionable ladies' heads "by that without, they are confused enough of all conscience"

— Robertson, James (fl.1768-1788)

Date: 1778

The heart like a bird to its nestling will fly, / And when by the weight of a parent its bending, / Yet wishes while constant to break and to die. / Like a bird in a snare, of its freedom bereft, / Still hoping and wishing releasement again, / 'Till clos'd in the cage the flutterer is left / To p...

— Robertson, James (fl.1768-1788)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"His strength always appears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an elastick mind."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study and exalted by imagination."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1780, 1781, 1788

"Two passions there by soft contention please, / The love of martial Fame, and learned Ease: / These friendly colours, exquisitely join'd, / Form the enchanting picture of thy mind."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)