Date: 1746, 1753

"Mourn it, ye sons of spleen, whose hands (mistaught) / Tore up this seed of sense, this plant of thought / Whence reasoning shoots might bloom life's garden o'er, And weedy wildness choak her walks no more."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1746

Self-love may expand "like the generous vine" so that "Another's joy becomes as full as thine"

— Ruffhead, James

Date: 1748

"Yet were the jarring passions tuned, / The soil from thorns and thistles clear, / Some latent virtue might appear."

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: 1748

"But more he search'd the mind, and roused from sleep / Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746, 1749

"But, since we never from the Breast of Fools / Can root their Passions, yet while Reason rules, / Let her hold forth her Scales with equal Hand, / Justly to punish, as the Crimes demand."

— Francis, Philip (1708-1773)

Date: 1751

"Consult your glass; then prune your wanton mind, / Nor furnish laughter for succeeding time."

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: 1751, 1791

"Now take a Simile at Hand, / Compare the mental Soil to Land."

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

Date: February 1755

"See yon delicious woodbines rise / By oaks exalted to the skies, / So view in Harriot's matchless mind / Humility and greatness join'd."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1758, 1781

"'Tis hence the sev'ral Passions take their Rise, / The Seeds of Virtue, and the Roots of Vice; / Hence Notes peculiar or to Young, or Old, / Phlegmatic, sanguine, amorous, or cold!"

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1759

"'Tis in the Culture of the Mind, as in that of the Earth; Precepts may be sown too thick together; so as to smother, and obstruct the Growth, and Product of each other, by encumbring the Soil, where they are sown; and by that Means frustrate the Labor of him, who sowes them."

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)