Date: 1777, 1780

"I buried my resentment deep in my heart, and outwardly appeared to rejoice at his success; I made a merit of resigning my pretensions to him, but I could not bear to be present at his nuptials."

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1777, 1780

"He asked an audience of his fair Mistress, and was permitted to declare the passion he had so long stifled in his own bosom."

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1780

"My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1781

"[A]ll you've said / Seems to wear Reason's stamp."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Could I thus stamp with guilt, sensations sprung / From thought most delicate"?

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Or when the burnish'd car by Phoebus roll'd, / Darts more intense it's rays of liquid gold, / Beneath some ivy-fringed cave reclined, / Fancy's bright visions rushing on thy mind, / With spirits bland, nursed by the genial powers, / Soothest with melodious notes the sultry hours!"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1781

"But as a Bow that's always bent / Hath soon its force elastic spent; / So, lest the over-burthen'd brain / (Which can't too great a weight sustain) / Should not so much rich food digest, / 'Tis sometimes good to give it rest."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: 1781

"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"He [Young] plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind / To stamp a lasting image of the mind!"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)