Nicolas Boileau: Pseudo-Longin, Traité du sublime

First translation into vernacular language (French) of the Longinus's Greek text on the Sublime, by Nicolas Boileau-Despéaux was published in Paris and made known in all scholarly circles in Europe.

Thomas Parnell: A Night-Piece on Death

The first graveyard poem

Alexander Pope: Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry

A short essay aiming to ridicule contemporary poets. Published under the pseudonym “Martinus Scriblerus”, it is a prose parody of Longinus' Peri Hupsous (On the Sublime), in that he imitates Longinus' system for the purpose of ridiculing contemporary poets. The nearest model for Pope's essay is the Treatise of the Sublime by Boileau of 1674.

James Thomson's Seasons

The Seasons is a series of four lengthy blank verse poems written by the Scottish author James Thomson, reflecting on the landscape of the countryside. The poem was published one season at a time, Winter in 1726, Summer in 1727, Spring in 1728 and Autumn only in the complete edition of 1730.

The poem was translated into German by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1745). This translation formed the basis for a work with the same title by Gottfried van Swieten, which became the libretto for Haydn's oratorio The Seasons.

The poem was extremely influential and much liked for at least a century after its writing. Other than Haydn, it stimulated works by John Christopher Smith, Thomas Gainsborough and J. M. W. Turner among many others.

William Smith: Longinus on the Sublime

Considered to be the first text on the subject of the Sublime, On the Sublime (Greek: Περì Ὕψους Perì Hýpsous; Latin: De sublimitate) by an unknown author, usually ascribed to Longinus or to Pseudo-Longinus, is a Roman-era Greek work dated to the 1st century AD. The most influential was William Smith's translation of 1739, entitled Longinus on the Sublime, that established the translator and once more brought the work into prominence, having its fifth edition in 1800.

Robert Blair: The Grave

A famous yet another graveyard poem

Edward Young's Night Thoughts

The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, better known simply as Night-Thoughts, is a long poem by Edward Young published in nine parts (or "nights") between 1742 and 1745.

Collins' Odes

Walpole redoes Strawberry Hill

Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Completed in 1750 and first published in 1751, this poem is considered as one of the 4 main graveyard poems. It was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742 and it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but embodies a meditation on death, and remembrance after death.

Originally titled Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard, the poem was completed when Gray was living near St Giles' parish church at Stoke Poges. It was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Claimed as "probably still today the best-known and best-loved poem in English", the Elegy quickly became popular. It was printed many times and in a variety of formats, translated into many languages, and praised by critics even after Gray's other poetry had fallen out of favour.

Tobias Smollet's Ferdinand Count Fathom

The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom is a novel by Tobias Smollett first published in 1753.

Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful