"
There, now, you plunge at once into the subject. You have no previous
narration to lead you to it. The two next lines in that Ode are, I
think, very good:
"Though fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state."'
Finding him in a placid humour, and wishing to avail myself of the
opportunity which I fortunately had of consulting a sage, to hear whose
wisdom, I conceived in the ardour of youthful imagination, that men
filled with a noble enthusiasm for intellectual improvement would gladly
have resorted from distant lands;--I opened my mind to him ingenuously,
and gave him a little sketch of my life, to which he was pleased to
listen with great attention.
I acknowledged, that though educated very strictly in the principles
of religion, I had for some time been misled into a certain degree of
infidelity; but that I was come now to a better way of thinking, and was
fully satisfied of the truth of the Christian revelation, though I was
not clear as to every point considered to be orthodox.
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