‘So I fared, Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds Like culprits to the bar; calling the mind, Suspiciously, to establish in plain day Her titles and her honours; now believing, Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground Of obligation, what the rule and whence The sanction; till, demanding formal _proof_, And seeking it in everything, I lost All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair. This was the crisis of that strong disease, This the soul’s last and lowest ebb; I drooped, Deeming our blessed reason of least use Where wanted most: “The lordly attributes Of will and choice,” I bitterly exclaimed, “What are they but a mockery of a Being Who hath in no concerns of his a test Of good and evil; knows not what to fear Or hope for, what to covet or to shun: And who, if those could be discerned, would yet Be little profited, would see, and ask, Where is the obligation to enforce?”’ In the autumn of 1795, Wordsworth, helped by the modest legacy of Raisley Calvert, was able to move with Dorothy to Racedown, and he immediately set to work on the _Borderers_, which I take to be the beginning of recovery. It was obviously written to exhibit the character of Oswald, the villain. He is one of a band of outlaws, and is jealous of the appointment of Marmaduke as chief. His revenge is a determination to make Marmaduke as guilty as himself. Marmaduke is in love with Idonea, and Oswald, partly by inventing lies about her blind father, Herbert, and partly by dexterous sophistry derived from _Political Justice_, endeavours to persuade Marmaduke to kill him. Marmaduke hesitates, but is finally overpowered. Although he cannot himself murder Herbert, he draws him to a desolate moor and leaves him to perish. Oswald then recounts his own story. When he was on a voyage to Syria he had believed on false evidence, that some wrong had been done to him by his captain, and accordingly contrived that he should be left to die in agony on a barren island. Oswald discovered that he had been deceived, but he declares exultantly to Marmaduke that, after being somewhat stunned, he found himself emancipated:— ‘Life stretched before me smooth as some broad way Cleared for a monarch’s progress. Priests might spin Their veil, but not for me—’twas in fit place Among its kindred cobwebs.’ He concludes by avowing impudently that Herbert is innocent and that the impulse which prompted the monstrous perfidy of procuring his death was— ‘I would have made us equal once again.’