Date: 1734

"Is then my heart to all the world beside / Softer than melting wax or summer snow, / But to myself harder than adamant?"

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1734

"I'm in a raging storm, / Where seas and skies are blended, while my soul / Like some light worthless chip of floating cork / Is tost from wave to wave."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1737 (also 1738, 1743, reprinted 1754)

"But, if dull fogs invade the head, / That mem'ry minds not what is read."

— Green, Matthew (1696-1737)

Date: 1737 (also 1738, 1743, reprinted 1754)

"Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate / The dark decrees and will of fate, / And dreams beneath the spreading beach / Inspire, and docile fancy teach; / While, soft as breezy breath of wind, / Impulses rustle thro' the mind."

— Green, Matthew (1696-1737)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"What pity then / Should sloth's unkindly fogs depress to earth / Her [the soul's] tender blossom; choak the streams of life, / And blast her spring!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

Man was ordained to "To chase each partial purpose from his breast; / And through the mists of passion and of sense, / And through the tossing tide of chance and pain, / To hold his course unfaultering, while the voice / Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent / Of nature, calls him to his high ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Vehement and swift / As lightening fires the aromatic shade / In Æthiopian fields, the stripling felt / Her inspiration catch his fervid soul, / And starting from his languor thus exclaim'd."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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)