speech, demanding the
impeachment of Warren Hastings, made the House adjourn "to collect
its reason,"--obviously because its reason had been lost. Sir
William Dolden, who moved the adjournment, frankly confessed that
it was impossible to give a "determinate opinion" while under the
spell of oratory. So the lawmakers, who had been fired to white heat,
retired to cool down again; and when Sheridan--always as deep in
difficulties as Micawber--was offered a thousand pounds for the
manuscript of the speech, he remembered Fox's verdict, and refused
to risk his unballasted eloquence in print.

Enthusiasm is praised because it implies an unselfish concern for
something outside our personal interest and advancement. It is
reverenced because the great and wise amendments, which from time
to time straighten the roads we walk, may always be traced back to
somebody's zeal for reform. It is rich in prophetic attributes,
banking largely on the unknown, and making up in nobility of design
what it lacks in excellence of attainment. Like simplicity, and
candour, and other much-commended qualities, enthusiasm is charming
until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm. It
is then that we begin to understand the attitude of Goethe, and
Talleyrand, and Pitt, and Sir Robert Peel, who saved themselves from
being consumed by resolutely refusing to ignite. "It is folly,"
observed Goethe, "to expect that other men will consent to believe
as we do"; and, having reconciled himself to this elemental obstinacy
of the human heart, it no longer troubled him that those whom he felt
to be wrong should refuse to acknowledge their errors.

There are men and women--not many--who have the happy art of making
their most fervent convictions endurable. Their hobbies do not
spread desolation over the social world, their prejudices do not
insult our intelligence. They may be so "abreast with the times" that
we cannot keep track of them, or they may be basking serenely in some
Early Victorian close. They may believe buoyantly in the Baconian
cipher, or in thought transference, or in the serious purposes of
Mr. George Bernard Shaw, or in anything else which invites credulity.
They may even express their views, and still be loved and cherished
by their friends.

How illuminating is the contrast which Hazlitt unconsciously draws
between the enthusiasms of Lamb which everybody was able to bear,
and the enthusiasms of Coleridge which nobody was abl