d
agreeable can be so common as that word.' She has heard of a sentimental
man; a sentimental party, and a sentimental walk; and has been applauded
for calling a letter sentimental. I hope that the philological
dictionary may tell us what was the first appearance of a word which, in
this sense, marks an epoch in literature, and, indeed, in much else. I
find the word used in the old sense in 1752 in a pamphlet upon
'_Sentimental_ differences in point of faith,' that is, differences of
sentiment or opinion. When, a few years later, Sterne published his
'Sentimental Journey,' Wesley asks in his journal what is the meaning of
the new phrase, and observes (the illustration has lost its point) that
you might as well say _continental_. The appearance of the phrase
coincides with the appearance of the thing; for Richardson was the first
sentimentalist. We may trace the same movement elsewhere, though we need
not here speculate upon the cause. Pope's 'Essay on Man' is the
expression in verse of the dominant theology of the Deists and their
opponents, which was beginning to be condemned as dry and frigid. A
desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night
Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious
domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the
same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs.
Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark.
Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of
Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes
of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial
hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of
the 'Nouvelle Heloise.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's
masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the
students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with
enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson
would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a
penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be
'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him
of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit
which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably
proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell
where so vague an impulse would ult