When the French revolution passed into the Terror, and especially when the republic changed a defensive into an aggressive war, Wordsworth lost his trust in immediate social reform. He turned more and more to abstract meditation on man and society, chiefly under the guidance of William Godwin—a period of dry intellectualism that went against the grain. He suffered from the suppression of his feelings, from being momentarily deaf to “the language of the sense.” Besides, his analysis of men’s motives soon convinced him that the evils he fought against were not so much the results of social forms as of something inherent in man’s nature. A man of commanding intellect may be wantonly cruel and vicious; he may use all the powers of logic for his detestable ends; reason is non-moral; the wicked “spin motives out of their own bowels.” Hence, a wellnigh absolute, though transient, pessimism, which vented itself in his play The Borderers. If the traditional bonds of morality are relaxed, the fixed rules of our actions or the intuitive guidance of the feelings repudiated, then full scope is given to bold, intelligent, bad men; then are the well-meaning blinded and betrayed to abominable deeds. Then is the Terror possible. Scarcely any hope of betterment is left. The kind-hearted Girondin Marmaduke will be an easy prey to the villainous Montagnard Oswald.