Date: 1783
"Learn hence, that husbands will be blind / To every beauty but the mind; / Great Venus there should hold her court; / should the Loves and Graces sport / There rapture beam'd in every feature, / Bound by that Cestus, called Good Nature."
preview | full record— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)
Date: 1784
"I love to weep, love the soft feast of grief, / Court mournful thoughts, nor ever wish relief;-- / Sadness I woo, yet still the phantom flies, / And joy seduces, whilst I ask for sighs."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1785
Jealousy's monsters may hurl "frighted Reason from her throne, / And with her all the charities that wait / To grace her virtuous Court"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1785
When Passion dwells in the heart it is "Pleasure's court"
preview | full record— Lovibond, Edward (bap. 1723, d. 1775)
Date: 1787
"Those who were well acquainted with the world and the Court, agreed, that the heart of woman was an inexplicable abyss; and all remarked the novelty of this sentiment."
preview | full record— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)
Date: 1788
"Impressed with these ideas, he paid his court most assiduously to the housekeeper, who put down all his compliments to the account of her own attractions; and was extremely pleased with her conquest; which she exhausted all her eloquence and all her wardrobe to secure."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1789, 1792
"The tops of these scarce veil'd the roots of those; / A winding court where wandering fancy walk'd / And to herself responsive Echo talk'd."
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)