Date: 1752, 1791

"Inglorious bondage to the mind, / Heaven-born, sublime, and unconfin'd!"

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1753

"Sorrow renounces latitude of range: / Dwells in confinement's cave; where thought sits chain'd / Muses are shunn'd: and horror's winking lamp."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1753

"Where shall a thoughtless youth this treasure find? / This art of judgment, that becalms the mind? / Chains anger short; and sets reflection free, / Gives tumult temper---and makes fortune see?"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1753

"By steel may bodies be confin'd, / But love, my Orra, chains the mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1753

"He combats Passion, rooted in the Soul, / Whose Powers at once delight ye and controul; / Whose Magic Bondage each lost Slave enjoys, / Nor wishes Freedom, tho' the Spell destroys."

— Moore, Edward (1712-1757)

Date: 1754

"Whereas what I call a discoverer, sets out in his search with an inclination to some particular point; he leads his judgment in chains, gives a loose to his imagination, and is sure to prove (at least to his own satisfaction) that the new and desired discovery is made."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"But I could no longer divert myself by Proteus-like putting on that character which best suited my fancy; for I was now chain'd down and enslaved to the most rigid of all tyrants, an uncontroulable passion."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"What is the juxta-position of ideas? what is that chain which connects, by intermediate ideas that are the links of it, ideas that are remote, but figurative stile?"

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"He sends his Harbinger before, the Youth / Adorn'd with Beauty, Chastity and Truth: / To base unworthy Slavery betray'd, / With Fetters gall'd, in Chains of Iron laid, / Which pierc'd his Soul; till the celestial Word, / In destin'd Hour, his Innocence explor'd."

— Tollet, Elizabeth (1694-1754)

Date: 1755

"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)