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,"

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— 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."

— 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...

— 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."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"He [Reason], upright Justicer, no doubt / Ad libitum puts in and out, / Adjusts and settles in a trice / What virtue is, and what is vice."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Opinions should be free as air; / No man, whate'er his rank, what're / His qualities, a claim can found / That my opinion must be bound, / And square with his; such slavish chains / From foes the liberal soul disdains; / Nor can, though true to friendship, bend / To wear them even from a friend."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Let those who rigid judgment own / Submissive bow at Judgment's throne, / And if they of no value hold / Pleasure, till pleasure is grown cold, / Pall'd and insipid, forced to wait / For Judgment's regular debate / To give it warrant, let them find / Dull subjects suited to their mind."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)