Date: 1796

"The speeches of the unsuspicious Eugenia, that a moment before would have past unheeded, now regaled her renovated fancy with a thousand amusing images, which so vigorously struggled against her sadness and her terrors, that they were soon nearly driven from the field by their sportive assailant...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: January 13, 1796

"Forbear! there is a spirit within me, sunk tho' I am in misery and despair, that will not suffer you, tho' now a conqueror in your turn, and towering far above the wretched son of Hastings, to take this base advantage of your fortune, and drag a trembling victim to the altar only to riot in the ...

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1797

"Fear thee, O Death!--Or hug the chains that bind / To joyless, cheerless life, her sick, reluctant mind?"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1797

"Thus man, the giant who now held her in captivity, would shrink to the diminutiveness of a fairy; and she would experience, that his utmost force was unable to enchain her soul, or compel her to fear him, while he was destitute of virtue."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1799

"High themes the rapt concent'ring Thoughts explore, / Freed from external Pleasure's glittering chain."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1800

"Yet e'en o'er thee, in thy despotic hours, / When thou hast chain'd the mind's excursive powers, / Though to thy gloomy keep by pain betray'd, / That mind can triumph by celestial aid."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1800

"Thy taste ador'd, with Virtue's temperate flame, / Truth, as the fountain both of art and fame; / Yet no ill-founded rule, no servile fear, / Chain'd thy free mind in Fancy's fav'rite sphere."

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1801

"My soul her bondage ill endures; / I pant for liberty like yours."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1802

"Paint courts, whose sorceries, too seducing bind, / In chains, in shameful slavish chains, the mind; / Courts, where unblushing Flatt'ry finds the way, / And casts a cloud o'er Truth's eternal ray."

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

Date: 1803

"The polish'd links that form the social chain, / For ages still to ages may remain / Nor snapt by rage, nor undermin'd by art, / If well the rivets join in every part; / But if those links that would the peasant bind, / Gall his chaf'd body, and corrode his mind, / The poor man's iron, and the r...

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