Date: 1762-3
"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
The five senses may "Allow [Reason] to retain the name / Of Royalty, and, as in sport, / To hold a mimic formal court, / Permitted (no uncommon thing) / To be a kind of puppet-king, / And suffer'd, by the way of toy, / To hold a globe, but not employ"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"Nay, should the eye, that nicest sense, / Neglect to send intelligence / Unto the brain distinct and clear, / Of all that passes in her sphere; / Should she presumptuous joy receive / Without the understanding's leave, / They deem it rank and daring treason / Against the monarchy of Reason"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"Or, with down-bending eye, seem wrought / Into a labyrinth of thought, / Where Reason wanders still in doubt, / And, once got in, cannot get out,"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762
"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1762, 1781
"Bear back, false Winchester, thy proffer'd Bliss, / Weigh Crowns and Kingdoms with a deed like this, / Far, far too light in Wisdom's eye they seem, / Nor shake the scale, while Reason holds the beam."
preview | full record— Keate, George (1729-1797)
Date: 1762-3
"Conjecture thus, That mental ignis fatuus, Led his poor brains a weary dance From France to England, hence to France."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"This glorious system form'd for man / To practise when and how he can, / If the five senses in alliance / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroken, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)