Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Has thy constant heart refus'd / The silken fetters of delicious ease?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"Though various are the tempers of mankind, / Pleasure's gay family hold all in chains."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Go, fix some weighty truth; / Chain down some passion; do some generous good; / Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile; / Correct thy friend; befriend thy greatest foe; / Or, with warm heart, and confidence Divine, / Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"His appetite wears Reason's golden chain, / And finds in due restraint its luxury."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"'I am too noble, and of too high a birth,' saith that excellent moralist, 'to be a slave to my body; which I look upon only as a chain thrown upon the liberty of my soul.'"

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1747

"SINCE freed from Love's enchanting Pains, / Your Heart no longer wears my Chains"

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1747-8

"To send a man and horse on purpose; as I did! My imagination chained to the belly of the beast, in order to keep pace with him!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1748, 1754

"If we attend to that Curiosity, or prodigious Thirst of Knowledge, which is natural to the Mind in every Period of its Progress, and consider withal the endless Round of Business and Care, and the various Hardships to which the Bulk of Mankind are chained down, it is evident, that in this presen...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: Tuesday, May 22, 1750

"He saw that, instead of conquering their fears, the endeavour of his gay friends was only to escape them; but his philosophy chained his mind to its object, and rather loaded him with shackles than furnished him with arms."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)