One of his most sympathetic commentators, H.M.

Brailsford, says of him: "His writing is of the age of enlightenment; his actions belong to romance....

In his spirit of adventure, in his passion for movement and combat, there Paine is romantic.
Paine thought in prose and acted epics.

He drew horizons on paper and pursued the infinite in deeds." Let us see where this impulse of romance and adventure led him; it was into strange enough paths at first! He was a mere boy--fifteen or sixteen, if I remember accurately--when the lure of the sea seized him.

It is reported that he signed up on a privateer (the Captain of which was appropriately called Death!), putting out from England, and sailed with her piratical crew for a year.