Date: 1706

"O'er the broad lands, and cross the tide, / On fancy's airy horse I ride, / (Sweet rapture of the mind!) / Till on the banks of Ganges' flood, / In a tall ancient grove I stood / For sacred use design's."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1719

"It would take up a larger Volume than this whole Work is intended to be, to set down all the Contrivances I hatch'd, or rather brooded upon in my Thought."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"My soul is like a wilderness, / Where beasts of midnight howl; / There the sad raven finds her place, / And there the screaming owl."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: First performed February 17, 1720.

"No more--thou waken'st in my tortur'd Heart / The cruel conscious Worm that stings to Madness. / O I'm undone!--I know it, and can bear / To be undone for thee, but not to lose thee."

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

Date: 1722

"His Words I must confess fir'd my Blood; all my Spirits flew about my Heart, and put me into Disorder enough."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"Those Reflections began to prey upon my Comforts, and lessen the Sweets of my other Enjoyments: They might be said to have gnaw'd a Hole in my Heart before; but now they made a Hole quite thro' it; now they eat into all my pleasant things; made bitter every Sweet, and mix'd my Sighs with every S...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"Conscience draws the Picture of the Crime in Apparition just before him, and the Reflection, not the injur'd Soul, is the Spectre that haunts him: Nor can he need a worse Tormenter in this Life; whether there is a worse hereafter, or no, I do not pretend to determine. This is certainly 'a Worm t...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"These abandon'd him to the Fury of an enrag'd Conscience, open'd the Sluices of the Soul, as I call them, and pour'd in a Flood of unsufferable Grief, letting loose those wild Beasts call'd Passions upon him, such as Rage, Anguish, Self-reproach, too late Repentance, and final Desperation, all t...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1733

"I see the Soul in pensive fit, / And mopeing like sick Linnet sit, / With dewy eye and moulting wing, / Unperch'd, averse to fly or sing."

— Green, Matthew (1696-1737) [pseud. Peter Drake, a Fisherman of Brentford]

Date: 1734

"Hail, holy souls, no more confin'd / To limbs and bones that clog the mind; / Ye have escap'd the snares, and left the chains behind."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)