Date: 1714

"Was our Reason given / For such a Use! to be thus puff'd about / Like a dry Leaf, an idle Straw, a Feather, / The Sport of every whifling Blast that blows?"

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1715

"Truth and Innocence: / A conscious Knowledg rooted in my Heart, / That to have sav'd my Country was my Duty."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: First performed February 17, 1720.

"The Threats of Death are nothing; / Tho' thy last Message shook his Soul, as Winds / On the bleak Hills bend down some lofty Pine; / Yet still he held his Root; till I found Means, / Abating somewhat of thy first Demand, / If not to make him wholly ours, at least / To gain sufficient to our End."

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

Date: 1722

"Consider; Gwendolen, my lasting Passion; / A Passion, that, through Time, takes deeper Root; / A Love, that, spight of Absence, hourly grows; / In spight even of Despair:--Yet, will I not / Despair; since Fortune favours thus my Hopes."

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1728

"When Love in an impetuous Torrent flows, / How vainly Reason would its Force oppose; / Hurl'd down the Stream, like Flowers before the Wind, / She leaves to Love, the Empire of the Mind."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1731

"When I confess, abhorrent of Deceit, / That Love, which seem'd to root my Soul in thee, / Has new transplanted it, to Elfrid's Bosom?"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1731

"Proud of Dominion, yet enslav'd to Fear, / Kings who love Blood, thro' one long Tempest steer, / While the calm Monarch, who with Smiles controuls, / Roots his safe Empire, and is King of Souls."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1743

"Love still nourishes [the heart] with a temperate Heat, as the Sun doth our Climate; and Beauties rise after Beauties in the one, just as Fruits do in the other"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1745

"He says that, tho' he were not nobly born, / Nature has form'd him noble, generous, brave, / Truely magnanimous, and warmly scorning / Whatever bears the smallest Taint of Baseness: / That every easy Virtue is his own; / Not learnt by painful Labour, but inspir'd, / Implanted in his Soul."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1745

"Behold the fatal Work of my dark Hand, / That by rude Force the Passions would command, / That ruthless sought to root them from the Breast; / They may be rul'd, but will not be opprest."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)