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He laughed heartily at his lordship's saying he was an ENTHUSIASTICAL farmer; 'for, said he, 'what can he do in farming by his ENTHUSIASM? Here, however, I think Dr Johnson mistaken. He who wishes to be successful, or happy, ought to be enthusiastical, that is to say, very keen in all the occupations or diversions of life.
An ordinary gentleman-farmer will be satisfied with looking at his fields once or twice a day: an enthusiastical farmer will be constantly employed on them; will have his mind earnestly engaged; will talk perpetually of them. But Dr Johnson has much of the nil admirari in smaller concerns. That survey of life which gave birth to his Vanity of Human Wishes early sobered his mind.
The spirits of Eveline in particular felt a depression, which her naturally lively temper was quite inadequate to resist; and as her ruminations became graver, had caught that calm and contemplative manner, which is so often united with an ardent and enthusiastical temperament.
After the death of Quesnay, the Grand Master of the Order, the Marquis de Mirabeau was unanimously elected his successor. Mirabeau was not deficient in a certain enlargement of mind, nor in acquirements, nor even in patriotism; but his writings are enthusiastical, and show that he had little more than glimpses of the truth. The Friend of Man was the enemy of all his family.
On the contrary, they who have attempted to use this freedom of judgment have been constantly and cruelly persecuted by them. The first steps towards the establishment of artificial theology, which has passed for Christianity ever since, were enthusiastical.
The conversation we have had, as well as the reflections of my own mind on past events, would, if I were condemned to my body again, teach me great moderation in my judgments of persons who might happen to differ from me in difficult scenes of public action; they would entirely cure me of the spirit of party, and make me think that as in the Church, so also in the State, no evil is more to be feared than a rancorous and enthusiastical zeal.
And now I am come to that astonishing part of his story, the account of his conversion, which I cannot enter upon without assuring the reader that I have sometimes been tempted to suppress many circumstances of it; not only as they may seem incredible to some, and enthusiastical to others, but I am very sensible they are liable to great abuses; which was the reason that he gave me for concealing the most extraordinary from many persons to whom he mentioned some of the rest.
To a man of fervid temperament suddenly convinced of sin, incapable of being satisfied with ambiguous answers to questions which mean life or death to him, the Church of England has little to say. If he is quiet and reasonable, he finds in it all that he desires. Enthusiastic ages and enthusiastical temperaments demand something more complete and consistent.
He has appeared the enthusiastical partizan of the aristocracy, a kind of government, which, carried to its height, is perhaps, of all the different species of despotism, the most intolerable.
And it is manifest the subject is a real one: there is nothing in it enthusiastical or unreasonable. And if it be indeed at all a subject, it is one of the utmost importance. As mankind have a faculty by which they discern speculative truth, so we have various affections towards external objects.
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