Date: 1717

"Yet he no rustic clownishness profest, / Nor was soft love a stranger to his breast"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1722

"[W]ho can tell / How each [image] awaken'd from its little cell / Starts forth, and how the soul's command it hears / And soon on fancy's theatre appears?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"Thou know'st the secret Soul's imperial Throne / Surrounded with thick Darkness, like thy own, / Where she to all the Senses Audience gives, / Appoints their Tasks, their Messages receives, / And passes Judgement in her Sov'reign Court / On every Envoy's true or false Report / How her sole Nod...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"The Cells, and little Lodgings, Thou canst see / In Mem'ry's Hoards and secret Treasury; / Dost the dark Cave of each Idea spy, / And see'st how rang'd the crouded Lodgers lye; / How some, when beckon'd by the Soul, awake, / While peaceful Rest their uncall'd Neighbours take."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"And now his Spirits by the Impulse move / Of the new Guest [Love], while soft unpractis'd Pains / Throb in his Breast and thrill along his Veins."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1733

"I nod in Company, I wake at Night, / Fools rush into my Head, and so I write."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, / Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain, / These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd, / Make, and maintain, the balance of the mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Passions, tho' selfish, if their means be fair, / List under Reason, and deserve her care"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"Such black designs are strangers to our breast."

— Rowe [née Singer], Elizabeth (1674-1737)

Date: 1737

"My Mind resumes the thread it dropt before; / Thoughts, which at Hyde-Park-Corner I forgot, / Meet and rejoin me, in my pensive Grott. "

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)