An active partisan, I thus convoked From every object pleasant circumstance To suit my ends; I moved among mankind 155 With genial feelings still predominant; When erring, erring on the better part, And in the kinder spirit; placable, Indulgent, as not uninformed that men See as they have been taught--Antiquity 160 Gives rights to error; and aware, no less, That throwing off oppression must be work As well of License as of Liberty; And above all--for this was more than all-- Not caring if the wind did now and then 165 Blow keen upon an eminence that gave Prospect so large into futurity; In brief, a child of Nature, as at first, Diffusing only those affections wider That from the cradle had grown up with me, 170 And losing, in no other way than light Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong. In the main outline, such it might be said Was my condition, till with open war Britain opposed the liberties of France. [E] 175 This threw me first out of the pale of love; Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source, My sentiments; was not, as hitherto, A swallowing up of lesser things in great, But change of them into their contraries; 180 And thus a way was opened for mistakes And false conclusions, in degree as gross, In kind more dangerous. What had been a pride, Was now a shame; my likings and my loves Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry; 185 And hence a blow that, in maturer age, Would but have touched the judgment, struck more deep Into sensations near the heart: meantime, As from the first, wild theories were afloat, To whose pretensions, sedulously urged, 190 I had but lent a careless ear, assured That time was ready to set all things right, And that the multitude, so long oppressed, Would be oppressed no more. But when events Brought less encouragement, and unto these 195 The immediate proof of principles no more Could be entrusted, while the events themselves, Worn out in greatness, stripped of novelty, Less occupied the mind, and sentiments Could through my understanding's natural growth 200 No longer keep their ground, by faith maintained Of inward consciousness, and hope that laid Her hand upon her object--evidence Safer, of universal application, such As could not be impeached, was sought elsewhere. 205