Date: 1755

The "busy Statesman's mind" may grow putrid on the throne of power so that "Fresh vices spring up ev'ry hour; / As in dead corses serpents breed, / And loathsome, on corruption feed"

— Derrick, Samuel (1724-1769)

Date: 1756

"Oh! my dear love, quick, quickly drive away / Those boding thoughts which on your quiet prey; / The breed of Fancy, gender'd in the brain, / Nurs'd by the grosser spirits, light, and vain; / The vagrant visions of the sleeping mind, / Which vanish wak'd, nor leave a mark behind."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1756

"Let then my soul and body be a-kin, / Naked without, as desolate within."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1762

"'Rest thou,' I said, 'behind my shield; rest in peace, thou beam of light! the gloomy chief of Sora will fly, if Fingal's arm is like his soul."

— Ossian; Macpherson, James (1736-1796)

Date: w. 1739, 1762

"Ye pale Inhabitants of Night, / Before my intellectual Sight / In solemn Pomp ascend."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: w. 1739, 1762

Melancholy's "transient Forms like Shadows pass, / Frail Offspring of the magic Glass, / Before the mental Eye."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1763

"True Virtue means, let Reason use her eyes,Nothing with Fools, and Int'rest with the Wise."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Think but one hour, and, to thy Conscience led / By Reason's hand, bow down and hang thy head; / Think on thy private life, recal thy Youth, / View thyself now, and own with strictest truth, / That SELF hath drawn Thee from fair Virtue's way / Farther than Folly would have dar'd to stray, / And ...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1765

"Let those, whose arts to fatal paths betray, / The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, / And snatch from Reason's ken th'auspicious ray / Truth darts from Heaven to guide th'exploring mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1767, 1784

"So, when on some weighty truth / A beam of heav'nly light its lustre sheds, / To Reason's eye it looks supremely fair."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)