Date: 1662, 1762

"My soul melteth away for very heaviness: comfort thou me according unto thy word."

— The Church of England

Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1774

"A parcel of warm hearts and inexperienced heads, heated by convivial mirth, and possibly a little too much wine, vow, and really mean at the time, eternal friendships to each other, and indiscreetly pour out their whole souls in common, and without the least reserve."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1775

"But, O, my brother! if thou hast a heart / That is not steel'd with stoic apathy / Against the magic of all-conqu'ring love, / Beware of beauty's pow'r; for she has charms / Wou'd melt the frozen breast of hoary age, / Or draw the lonely hermit from his cell / To gaze upon her."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721-1784)

Date: 1777

"Her mind, not less pure and unsullied, was obvious and transparent as the dear rivulet in the sequestered vale."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1784

"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)