" 'Sentimental'! what is
that? It is not English: he might as well say, 'Continental' [!]. It is
not sense. It conveys no determinate idea; yet one fool makes many. And
this nonsensical word (who would believe it?) is become a fashionable
one!' ('Journal', February 11, 1772). In 1773, Goldsmith puts it in the
'Dedication' to 'She Stoops':-- 'The undertaking a comedy, not merely
'sentimental', was very dangerous;' and Garrick (forgetting Kelly and
'False Delicacy') uses it more than once in his 'Prologue' to the same
play, e.g. -- 'Faces are blocks in 'sentimental' scenes.' Further
examples might easily be multiplied, for the word, in spite of Johnson,
had now come to stay. Two years subsequently we find Sheridan referring
to
The goddess of the woful countenance,
The 'sentimental' Muse! --
in an occasional 'Prologue' to 'The Rivals'. It must already have
passed into the vocabulary of the learned. Todd gives examples from
Shenstone and Langhorne. Warton has it more than once in his 'History of
English Poetry'; and it figures in the 'Essays' of Vicesimus Knox.
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