Date: 1723

"Can Kings the Empire of the Soul invade?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

The "conscious Pow'r, the Judge within," may "With Frowns and awful Menaces begin / To fill [one] with Remorse and secret Fear"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1762-3

The five senses may "Allow [Reason] to retain the name / Of Royalty, and, as in sport, / To hold a mimic formal court, / Permitted (no uncommon thing) / To be a kind of puppet-king, / And suffer'd, by the way of toy, / To hold a globe, but not employ"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1684, 1717

"Fancy sits Queen of all; / While the poor under-Faculties resort, / And to her fickle Majesty make Court"

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: 1684, 1717

The understanding is first to pay court to Queen Fancy, "plainly clad,
But usefully; no Ent'rance to be had"

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: 1684, 1717

"Reason, the honest Counsellor, this knows, / And into Court with res'lute Virtue goes; / Lets Fancy see her loose irregular Sway, / Then how the flattering Follies sneak away!"

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: 1722

"He, who the revelation owns, yet brings / The sacred truths and high mysterious things / Of Christian faith, which heav'nly light reveals, / To reason's bar, to a wrong court appeals."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1763

Love of fame may spur one to deeds of pith, "where courage, tried / In Reason's court, is amply justified."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)