Date: 1718

"Drawn by their Pray'r, from Heav'n descending Dews / Cheer the fair Plant, and Heat Divine infuse: / While watchful they destroy'd the springing Weeds, / Baneful to Virtue, which our Bosom breeds, / Nature's spontaneous Growth, that no Assistant needs."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"A Blow of Virtues, all of heav'nly Kind, / Mingled their Beauties, and adorn'd your Mind."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"You from your Breast must root Religion's Weed, / Not only sin, but disbelieve your Creed."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"May not this cheering Breath, this soothing Air, / Nourish too fast Vain-Glory's secret Root, / And make its rank pernicious Branches shoot, / Till on your Mind they baneful Blossoms spread, / And drop malignant Dews on Virtue's tender Head?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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."

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

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...

— 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."

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1730

"This would effectually kill in us all the little seeds of pride, vanity and self-conceit, which are apt to shoot up in the minds of such whose thoughts turn more on those comparative advantages which they enjoy over some of their fellow-creatures, than on that infinite distance which is placed b...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1741, 1742, 1755

"A Miracle that can be accounted for no other Way, than by what has been said above of the Legislator's principal Concern in the Support of the Doctrine; and of the deep Root it takes in the Mind of Man, when once it is received, by its agreeable Nature."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

Date: 1745

"Soon as his Breast receiv'd the potent Ray, / Whate'er possest it, instantly gave way; / As in the Wood before the Lightning's Beam, / Perish the Leaves, and the whole Tree is Flame."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)