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Hierarchies of Lagrangians of degree two, each only partly determined by the choice of leading terms and with some coefficients remaining free, are considered. The free coefficients they contain satisfy the most general differential geometric criterion currently known for the existence of a Lagrangian and variational formulation, and derived by solution of the full inverse problem of the calculus of variations for scalar fourth-order ODEs respectively. However, our Lagrangians have significantly greater freedom since our existence conditions are for individual coefficients in the Lagrangian. In particular, the classes of Lagrangians derived here have four arbitrary or free functions, including allowing the leading coefficient in the resulting variational ODEs to be arbitrary, and with models based on the earlier general criteria for a variational representation being special cases. For different choices of leading coefficients, the resulting variational equations could also represent traveling waves of various nonlinear evolution equations, some of which recover known physical models. Families of regular and embedded solitary waves are derived for some of these generalized variational ODEs in appropriate parameter regimes, with the embedded solitons occurring only on isolated curves in the part of parameter space where they exist. Future work will involve higher order Lagrangians, the resulting equations of motion, and their solitary wave solutions.