Date: 1788

Slavery "speculates with skill refin'd, / How deep a wound will stab the mind; / How far the spirit can endure / Calamity, that hopes no cure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"And ah! the blessings valued most / By human minds, are blessings lost / Unlike the objects of the eye, / Enlarging, as we bring them nigh, / Our joys, at distance strike the breast, / And seem diminish'd when possest."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"'Is there a Man, who, wealthy to no end, / 'Ne'er knew the common wish to be a Friend, / 'Whose callous Heart's to all Compassion steel'd?"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1792

A passion may burst "from the grave, in evil hour" and hasten to its prey with fiercer pow'r and "vulture-like, with appetite increas'd" riot on the undiminish'd feast

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1792

"Her Heart a Stranger to Disguise; / Her Mind as perfect as her Face"

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

Date: 1793

" When painful truths invade the mind, / Ev'n wisdom wishes to be blind, / And hates th' officious ray."

— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)

Date: 1798

"He sticks to his text I find; for he always begins his sermons by telling me what fine things I could do, if I would but give my soul elbow room"

— Brand, Hannah (d. 1821); Philippe Héricault Destouches (1680-1754)

Date: 1802

"Blest mirror! which can thus, with magic pow'r, / Give the rank weed the fragrance of the flow'r; / And from deformities,--without, within, / Spots in the mind, or specks upon the skin-- / Can all that's good, and all that's fair reflect, / And change to beauty, every dark defect."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1805

"Or, when deserted by the Nine, / Forc'd to elaborate the line, / To labour more, yet less to please, / In the Mind's anguish or disease."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)