Date: 1796, 1806

"A dread coincidence of time and act / Drew me from Reason's empire to Despair!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1796, 1806

"O! blessings on thee!--soft, this ray of hope / Dazzles my aching senses, and I start / As from a dream of horror, where the brain, / Stampt with the semblance of some phantom dire / Reflects it, waking, to the fearful gaze!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1796, 1806

"Ambition!--not that emulative zeal Which wings the tow'ring souls of godlike men! / But bold, oppressive, self-created pow'r, / That, trampling o'er the barrier of the laws, / And scattering wide the tender shoots of pity, / Strikes at the root of reason, and confines / Nature itself in bondage!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: April 20, 1796

"Ere yet we were, / Our finer tones of mind some guardian spirit / Touch'd into harmony; and, when we met, / Th' according strings struck forth a sound so sweet, / That heav'n itself might listen! love! ev'n love, / That brand of discord, burns within our bosoms, / Pale—cold—before the steady fla...

— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)

Date: April 20, 1796

"Oh! that superior mind is gone for ever! / --Yet still, thus ruin'd, like a broken mirror, / It gives a perfect image in each fragment!"

— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)

Date: April 20, 1796

"Oh, farewell! / I cannot coin in words my soul's soft meaning!"

— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)

Date: 1798

"Every letter of it stands engraven on my heart"

— Leftley, Charles (fl. 1798)

Date: 1798

"It matters not, though gen'rous in their nature, / They yet may serve a most ungen'rous end; / And he who teaches men to think, though nobly, / Doth raise within their minds a busy judge / To scan his actions."

— Baillie, Joanna (1762-1851)