'
Goldsmith's use of 'sentimental' in the 'prologue' to 'She Stoops to
Conquer' (p. 109, l. 36) -- the only occasion upon which he seems to
have employed it in his 'poems' -- affords an excuse for bringing
together one or two dispersed illustrations of the rise and growth of
this once highly-popular adjective, not as yet reached in the N. E. D.
Johnson, who must often have heard it, ignores it altogether; and in
Todd's edition of his 'Dictionary' (1818) it is expressly marked with a
star as one of the modern words which are 'not' to be found in the
Doctor's collection. According to Mr. Sidney Lee's admirable article in
the 'Dictionary of National Biography' on Sterne, that author is to be
regarded as the 'only begetter' of the epithet. Mr. Lee says that it
first occurs in a letter of 1740 written by the future author of
'Tristram Shandy' to the Miss Lumley he afterwards married. Here is the
precise and characteristic passage:-- 'I gave a thousand pensive,
penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often graced, in those
quiet and 'sentimental' repasts -- then laid down my knife and fork, and
took out my handkerchief, and clapped it across my face, and wept like a
child' (Sterne's 'Works' by Saintsbury, 1894, v.
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