enthusiasm
As in Walton's first letter (Letter 1)
enthusiasm is a charged word. In this period it was as often a pejorative
as an honorific word: fanatics of whatever stripe were said to be
enthusiastic. This was particularly true of religious fanatics and
self-proclaimed prophets. Such figures claimed to be directly inspired by
God, to feel the presence of God within (which is the root meaning of the
word in Greek). In an ironic twist on this meaning Mary Shelley presents
Victor as a self-styled Ezekiel, wrought up not by a storm sent by God but
in a mental hurricane of his own making as he endeavors to usurp the function
of the deity.
Johnson's 1755 Dictionary is
highly suggestive in its implicit aversion to the idea of enthusiasm,
defining it thus:
1. A vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour
or communication.
2. Heat of imagination; violence of passion; confidence of opinion.
3. Elevation of fancy; exaltation of ideas.
If anything, Johnson is even more severe on the practitioner than on the
concept, defining an enthuasist as:
1. One who vainly imagines a private revelation; one who has a vain
confidence of his intercourse with God.
2. One of a hot imagination, or violent passions.
3. One of elevated fancy, or exalted ideas.
In, as it were, burying his third definition beneath the others, Johnson
implies that such exaltation is spurious, ungrounded in reality. His
dismissive "hot imagination" might similarly be taken as a synonymn for the
"ardour" so conspicuously shared and honored by the protagonists of the
novel. Quite clearly, the repeated use of "vain" and "vainly" is
intended by Johnson to remind us of their substantive, which is "vanity."
