Date: 1766
Love "leaves us not the liberty of choice; it commands in the beginning, as a master, and, reigns, afterwards, as a tyrant, till we are accustomed to its chains, by length of time; or, till they are broken by the efforts of powerful reason, or, the caprice of continued vexation."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)
Date: 1766
"Far beyond the bonds of meaning / Fancy flies, a Fairy queen!"
preview | full record— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)
Date: 1770
"But this faculty [Reason] has been much perverted, often to vile, and often to insignificant purposes; sometimes chained like a slave or malefactor, and sometimes soaring in forbidden and unknown regions."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1771
"But, Sir, my passions are my masters; they take me where they will; and oftentimes they leave to reason and to virtue nothing but my wishes and my sighs."
preview | full record— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)
Date: 1774
"The nymph, who in my bosom reigns, / With such full force my heart enchains, / That nothing ever can impair / The empire she possesses there."
preview | full record— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)
Date: w. c. 1751, 1775
"With darts and flames some arm his [Love's] feeble hands, / His infant brow with regal honours crown; / Whilst vanquished Reason, bound with silken bands, / Meanly submissive, falls below his throne."
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: w. 1763, 1776
"By mercy prompted his correcting hand / Inflicts the stroke of salutary pain, / To check tyrannic Passions's wild demand, / And free our Reason from it's slavish chain."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1782
"All that pride could demand, and all to which ambition could aspire, all that happiness could cover or the most scrupulous delicacy exact, in her I found united; and while my heart was enslaved by her charms, my understanding exulted in its fetters."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1788
"He had been the slave of beauty, the captive of sense; love he ne'er had felt; the mind never rivetted the chain, nor had the purity of it made the body appear lovely in his eyes."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1788
"On Eloquence, prevailing art! / Whose force can chain the list'ning heart; / The throb of Sympathy inspire, / And kindle every great desire; / With magic energy controul / And reign the sov'reign of the soul!"
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)