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."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1775

"Such was the Wreath, when HYMEN led / Our MONARCH to his nuptial bed; / And such the tender Chain which binds, / In mutual Love, their wedded Minds."

— Nugent, Robert [or Craggs] (1702-1788)

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."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1775

"Yet--yet--perhaps your high respect alone for this solemn compact has fettered your inclinations, which else had made worthier choice."

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1776-1789

"In the same manner [says Longinus] as some children always remain pigmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined; thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

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."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1777

"Is there no Senator, whose soul disdains / To bear about his mind the golden chains / Of base Corruption?"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

Date: 1777, 1810

"Here soars the poet, all, impassioned mind, / And leaves his earthly clog behind."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1778

"A thirst for knowledge, which can never be gratified, would not have been implanted; a mind which was to be chained to the earth, would never have been bent on the skies"

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)