Date: November 1772

"Must Chloe hope in vain to steel that heart / In which each nymph would gladly share a part?"

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

Date: 1774

"Her soul, refin'd from passion's base alloy, / Seem'd wrapt in visions of seraphic joy."

— Roberts, William Hayward (d. 1791)

Date: 1775

"But, O, my brother! if thou hast a heart / That is not steel'd with stoic apathy / Against the magic of all-conqu'ring love, / Beware of beauty's pow'r; for she has charms / Wou'd melt the frozen breast of hoary age, / Or draw the lonely hermit from his cell / To gaze upon her."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721-1784)

Date: 1777

"Courage, the warrior's bosom steel'd."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be so concealed in baser matter that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebe...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: January 1, 1779

"There [to Heaven's Regions] when the soul, in search of purer day, / Loos'd from mortality's impris'ning clay / Shall swifter than the forked lightning dart."

— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)

Date: June 5, 1780

"Some, though they wish it, are not steel'd enough, / Nor is each would-be villain conscience-proof."

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)

Date: 1781

"But the difference is much greater between the ideas of sense, the materials upon which the mind first begins its work, and the truths produced by its operations, than between the rough marble, and the statue formed by the skill of PHIDIAS."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"Let matter then be allowed to furnish the first materials; the enlightened mind, which by its operations upon these discovers truth, and pursues it through all its distant connections, must have powers as far superiour to that which gave the first impression, as PHIDIAS is superiour to the marble."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Yet are there some who think (but what a shame!) / Poor people's souls like pence of Birmingham, / Adulterated brass--base stuff--abhorr'd-- / That never can pass current with the Lord; / And think because of wealth they boast a store, / With ev'ry freedom they may treat the poor."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)