Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

Date: 1777, 1810

"Here soars the poet, all, impassioned mind, / And leaves his earthly clog behind."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: November 9, 1779

"Thus, conscience freed from ev'ry clog, / Mahometans eat up the hog."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1781

"My head and ears confus'd, I find / One cannot here relax the Mind, / In vain she strives to slip her chains, / Law, Law, through all these regions reigns; / So back to Chambers I return, / More Patience, and more Law, to learn."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781

"When love is fetter'd, all is fire, / And tender passion soon decays; / Like those sweet birds which soon expire, / When we wou'd force their tuneful lays."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1782

"Disdainful of those little arts that bind, / In slavish trammels, the inferior mind, / No stage finesse her action shall disgrace, / To trick a generous audience out of praise; / But Truth, and Nature, shall still plead her cause, / And win the tribute of a just applause."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1782

"He [the slave] feels his body's bondage in his mind, / Puts off his generous nature, and, to suit / His manners with his fate, puts on the brute."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"The pride of letter'd ignorance, that binds / In chains of error our accomplish'd minds, / That decks with all the splendour of the true, / A false religion, is unknown to you."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: August 1783

"Death broke at once the vital chain, / And free'd his soul the nearest way."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1783

"The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy; / Their minds are fetter'd; then how can they be free, / While, like the mounting flame, / We spring to battle o'er the floods of death?"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)