Date: 1778

"Why, my sweet one, you are all power, all a goddess; and you hold my heart enslaved in the chains of immortal love."

— Robertson, James (fl.1768-1788)

Date: 1779

"Let me exhort ye then to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance: burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts, mount the chimney of hope, take from hence the bar of good resolution, break through the stone wall of despair, and all the strong holds in the dark entry of the v...

— Anonymous

Date: November 9, 1779

"Thus, conscience freed from ev'ry clog, / Mahometans eat up the hog."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1779

"Banish'd--robb'd of my country, and my name; / Yet they have left a mind defies their vengeance-- / Which, though these limbs were lock'd in bolts of steel, / And darkness wrapt these precious founts of light, / Would rise superior to their bounded power, / And scorn alike their fetters, and the...

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1779-1780, 1781

"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1780

"Shall vanity enslave this freeborn mind, / And chains of sense my nobler passions bind?"

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"In vain my fetter'd thoughts attempt to fly / And weakly fluttering mean the distant sky!"

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"Generous Britain scorns to bind, / In servile chains, the freeborn mind."

— Pilon, Frederick (1750-1788)

Date: 1781

"My head and ears confus'd, I find / One cannot here relax the Mind, / In vain she strives to slip her chains, / Law, Law, through all these regions reigns; / So back to Chambers I return, / More Patience, and more Law, to learn."

— Keate, George (1729-1797)

Date: February 24, 1777; 1781

"She is the deceitful sorceress who now holds your husband's heart in bondage."

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)