Date: 1766, 1806

"Too fatal proof! since thou, with av'rice fraught, / Didst basely urge (ah! shun the wounding thought!) / That tender circumstance--reveal it not, / Lest torn with rage I curse my fated lot: / Lest startled Reason abdicate her reign, / And Madness revel in this heated brain."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1766

"Far beyond the bonds of meaning / Fancy flies, a Fairy queen!"

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1766, 1808

"Nature, my friend, profuse in vain, / May every gift impart; / If unimprov'd, they ne'er can gain / An empire o'er the heart."

— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)

Date: 1766

"Wisdom, which men with so much pain, / With so much weariness attain, / May in a little moment quit, / And abdicate the throne of Wit, / And leave, a vacant seat, the brain, / For Folly to usurp and reign."

— Lloyd, Evan (1734-1776)

Date: 1766

Melancholy may "round [one's] heart erect [her] ebon throne"

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1766

"Sweet friendship in the heart confirms her throne"

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1767

"Man in this world, Sir, may be compared to a hackney-coach upon a stand; continually subject to be drawn by his unruly appetites, on one foolish jaunt or another; but you will say, if his appetites are horses, which as it were drag him along, reason is the coachman to rule those horses--But, Sir...

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1767

"Instant my Sense return'd, restor'd and whole, / To re-possess its empire of the soul. / So, when o'er Phoebus low-hung clouds prevail, / Sleep on each hill, and sadden ev'ry dale; / Sudden, up-springing from the north, invades / A purging wind, which first disturbs the shades; / Thins the black...

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

Date: 1767, 1784

"But if foul Passion, or distemper'd Pride, / Impede its search, or Phrenzy seize the brain, / Then Ignorance a gloomy darkness spreads, / Or Superstition, with mishapen forms, / Erects its savage empire in the mind."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1767

"The order of things is thereby reversed; reason is dethroned, and sense usurps the place of judgment."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)