Date: 1596

"For as the sicke man, vvhen he seemes to sleepe and take his rest, is invvardly full of troubles: so the benummed and drousie conscience wants not his secret pangs and terrours; and when it shal be roused by the iudgement of God, it waxeth cruell and fierce like a wild beast."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1689

The passion ambition "'Tis the minds Wolf, a strange Disease, / That ev'n Saciety can't appease"

— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)

Date: 1727

"Some, with a dry and barren Brain, / Poor Rogues! like costive Lap-Dogs strain; / While others with a Flux of Wit, / The Reader and their Friends besh**t."

— Somervile, William (1675-1742)

Date: 1741

"For Thou who, faulty, wrong'st another's Fame, / Howe'er so great and dignify'd thy Name, / The Muse shall drag thee forth to publick Shame; / Pluck the fair Feathers from thy Swan-skin Heart, / And shew thee black and guileful as thou art."

— Miller, James (1704-1744)

Date: 1742

"But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, / Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found. / As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel, / So dies in human hearts the thought of death."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Beneath what baleful planet, in what hour / Of desperation, by what Fury's aid, / In what infernal posture of the soul, / All hell invited, and all hell in joy / At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, / Did thy foul fancy whelp so black a scheme / Of hopes abortive, faculties half-blown, / And...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1762-3

"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1773

"But if thou com'st with frown austere / To nurse the brood of care and fear; / To bid our sweetest passions die, / And leave us in their room a sigh; / Or if thine aspect stern have power / To wither each poor transient flower, / That cheers the pilgrimage of woe, / And dry the springs whence ho...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: December 1790

"The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the torpedo’s touch."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)