Date: 1755

"You've plainly shewn your soul was brazen, / And eke your snowy bosom flinty."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1755

"[I]n short, it is very well attested, that he had one mistress, whom he inthroned, as sovereign of his heart, and to whom he recommended himself with great caution and privacy, because he piqued himself upon being a secret knight."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1755

"My squire, however, will intimate how I am; while I content myself with assuring you, that I will, to all eternity, preserve engraven upon the tablets of my memory, the benevolence you this day vouchsafed unto me, that I may be grateful for the favour, as long as life shall remain."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1755

"In this manner did he invent names for a great many knights in either army, to all of whom also he gave arms, colours, mottos and devices, without the least hesitation, being incredibly inspired by the fumes of a distempered fancy"

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1756

"This heart is become a mere rasa tabula; you must help it to the [GREEK CHARACTERS], you must lay in it the foundation of natural religion, (i.e. "the dictates of common sense, for natural religion, according to Mr. H. is nothing else,) if you would raise the superstr...

— Patten, Thomas (1714-1790)

Date: 1756, 1793

"Domestic troubles long my mind oppress'd, / And made the muse a stranger to my breast"

— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)

Date: 1757

" To trace the actions of the good and great: / And stamp bright virtue's image on the heart"

— Boyce, Samuel (d. 1775)

Date: 1760

"A man this emptied and vacuated of self-conceit, these lines of natural pride, being blotted out, the soul is as a Tabula rasa, an unwritten table, to receive any impression of the law of God, that he pleases to put on it; and then his words are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to ...

— Binning, Hugh (1627-1653)

Date: 1762

"I'm speaking of thy mind alone; / Where keen reproaches all resort, / Where biting scandal holds her court; / From whence she throws her pois'nous dart / At ev'ry unprovoking heart."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"O'er crabbed authors life's gay prime to waste, / To clamp wild genius in the chains of taste, / To bear the slavish drudgery of schools, / And tamely stoop to ev'ry pedant's rules."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)