Date: 1713, 1719

"This Fancy having once taken Root, grew apace, and branch'd it self forth into a thousand vain Conceits."

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

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: 1723

"Cease, prithee, Muse, thus to infest / The barren Region of my Breast, / Which never can an Harvest yield, / Since Weeds of Noise o'er-run the Field."

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: Monday, April 13. 1724.

"If, according to the Maxim in the Forehead of my Paper, it was my immediate Office to Teach that young Spark better Things, which I had then a great Inclination to Do, only for Fear of discovering my self, I would begin by Weeding out of his Mind that rank Conceit, which he entertains of his Par...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1724, 1755

The mind is a soil that must be cultivated; left fallow "an hateful crop succeeds"

— Tollet, Elizabeth (1694-1754)

Date: 1726, 1775

"Thro' ev'ry tender tube they rove, / In finer spirits strike the brain; / Wind quick thro' ev'ry fibrous grove, / And seek, thro' pores, the heart again."

— Savage, Richard (1697/8-1743)

Date: 1727, 1787

"Oak was his heart, his breast with steel / Thrice mail'd, that first the brittle keel / Committed to the murtherous deep."

— Welsted, Leonard (1688-1747)

Date: 1728

"When Love in an impetuous Torrent flows, / How vainly Reason would its Force oppose; / Hurl'd down the Stream, like Flowers before the Wind, / She leaves to Love, the Empire of the Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)