Date: 1760-7

"Could no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred Court [of Conscience]:--Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;--or was asham'd to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: April 1761

"What the grave triflers on this busy scene, / When they make use of this word Reason, mean, / I know not; but according to my plan, / 'Tis Lord Chief-Justice in the court of man"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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: 1762

"I'm speaking of thy mind alone; / Where keen reproaches all resort, / Where biting scandal holds her court; / From whence she throws her pois'nous dart / At ev'ry unprovoking heart."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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)

Date: 1763

"He will by this means too escape the pernicious snares of flattery, the servile court of interested inferiors, and all the various mischiefs which poison the minds of young men bred up as heirs to great estates and titles."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1764?

"Whether we will or no, Through reason's court doth [the word lord] unquestion'd go"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1792

"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"

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