Date: 1785

In the heart, "by jarring tempests tost, / Truth, honour, reason, virtue all are lost"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1785

"Ere Gold appear'd the Passions took their course; / Like whirldwinds swept the flowers of life along, / And crush'd the weak, and undermin'd the strong."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1785

"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

Date: 1785

"I was delighted with this flash bursting from the cloud which hung upon his mind, closed my letter directly, and joined the company."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Transient clouds darkened my imagination, and in those clouds I saw events from which I shrunk; but a sentence or two of the Rambler's conversation gave me firmness, and I considered that I was upon an expedition for which I had wished for years, and the recollection of which would be a treasure...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: w. 1782, 1786, 1816

"In the first ebullition of his fury, Vathek had resolved to rip open the body of Alboufaki and to stuff it with those of the negresses and of Carathis herself, but the remembrance of the Giaour, the palace of Istakar, the sabres, and the talismans, flashing before his imagination, with the simul...

— Beckford, William (1760-1844)

Date: 1787

"It is enough--my scruples are at an end--my prejudices, like clouds before the rising sun, vanish before the lights of your superior reason."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: January 23, 1787, 1788

"No storms of passion I desire."

— Arley [Miles Peter Andrews (1742- 814)?]

Date: 1787

"Fat is foul weather--dims the fancy's sight"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)