Date: 1755, 1771

"And yet, let but a zephyr's breath begin/ To stir the latent excellence within-- / Waked in that moment's elemental strife, / Impassion'd genius feels the breath of life; / The' expanding heart delights to leap and glow, / The pulse to kindle, and the tear to flow."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1755, 1771

"But he whose active, unencumber'd mind / Leaves this low earth and all its mists behind, / Fond in a pure unclouded sky to glow, / Like the bright orb that rises on the Po, / O'er half the globe with steady splendour shines, / And ripens virtues as it ripens mines."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1771

"And, like my friend, a gen'rous aim pursues: / To combat vice in this licentious age, / To teach the pleasing moral from the stage, / The rising gusts of passion to controul"

— Stevens, George Alexander (1710?-1784)

Date: 1772, 1810

"He spoke: a sudden cloud his senses stole, / And thickening darkness swam o'er all his soul"

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1772, 1810

"'I saw thee near the murmuring fountain lie; / 'Mark'd the rough storm that gather'd in thy breast, / 'And knew what care thy joyless soul opprest."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1772, 1810

"'So vain his wishes, and so weak his mind, / 'His soul, a bright obscurity at best, / 'And rough with tempests his afflicted breast, / 'His life, a flower ere evening sure to fade, / 'His highest joys, the shadow of a shade."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1773

"Not all the storms that shake the pole / Can e'er disturb thy halcyon soul, / And smooth unaltered brow."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1773

"The potent sounds like lightning dart / Resistless through the glowing heart"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1774

Romances "ventilate the mind by sudden gusts of passion; and prevent the stagnation of thought, by a fresh infusion of dissimilar ideas"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)