264 DESCRIPTIONS OF NEWELL'S VIEWS

mind, refer to 1806-9. His enthusiastic identifications will no doubt be taken by the reader with the needful grain of salt. Goldsmith probably remembered the hawthorn bush, the church upon the hill, the watercress gatherer, and some other familiar objects of the 'seats of his youth.' But distance added charm to the regretful retrospect; and in the details his fancy played freely with his memories. It would be unwise, for example, to infer-as Mr. Hogan did-the decorations of the Three Pidgeons at Lissoy from the account of the inn in the poem.1 Some twelve years before its publication, when he was living miserably in Green Arbour Court, Goldsmith had submitted to his brother Henry a sample of a heroi-comic poem describing a Grub Street writer in bed in 'a paltry ale-house.' In this 'the sanded floor,' the 'twelve good rules' and the broken tea-cups all played their parts as accessories, and even the double-dealing chest had its prototype in the poet's night-cap, which was a cap by night-a stocking all the day.' A year or two later he expanded these lines in the Citizen of the World, and the scene becomes the Red Lion in Drury Lane. From this second version he adapted, or extended again, the description of the inn parlour in The Deserted Village. It follows therefore, either that he borrowed for London the details of a house in Ireland, or that he used for Ireland the details of a house in London. If, on the other hand, it be contended that those details were common to both places, then the identification in these particulars of Auburn with Lissoy falls hopelessly to the ground

6

APPENDIX C

THE EPITHET SENTIMENTAL.'

Goldsmith's use of 'sentimental' in the 'Prologue' to She Stoops to Conquer (p. 109, 1. 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

1 What follows is taken from the writer's 'Introduction' tò Mr. Edwin Abbey's illustrated edition of The Deserted Village, 1902, p. ix.

reached in the N. E. D.

Johnson, who must often have heard it, and in Todd's edition of his Dictionary

ignores it altogether ; (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. 25). Nine years later, however circulated, ' sentimental' has grown 'so much in vogue' that it has reached from London to the provinces. 'Mrs. Belfour' (Lady Bradshaigh) writing from Lincolnshire to Richardson says:-' Pray, Sir, give me leave to ask you... what, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue amongst the polite, both in town and country? In letters and common conversation, I have asked several who make use of it, and have generally received for answer, it is-it is-sentimental. Every thing clever and agreeable is comprehended in that word; but [I] am convinced a wrong interpretation is given, because it is impossible every thing clever and agreeable can be so common as this word. I am frequently astonished to hear such a one is a sentimental man; we were a sentimental party; I have been taking a sentimental walk. And that I might be reckoned a little in the fashion, and, as I thought, show them the proper use of the word, about six weeks ago, I declared I had just received a sentimental letter. Having often laughed at the word, and found fault with the application of it, and this being the first time I ventured to make use of it, I was loudly congratulated upon the occasion: but I should be glad to know your interpretation of it' (Richardson's Correspondence, 1804, iv. pp. 282-3). The reply of the author of Clarissa, which would have been interesting, is not given; but it is clear that by this date (1749)' sentimental' must already have been rather overworked by the polite.' Eleven years after this, we meet with it in the Prologue to Colman's' Drama

tick Novel' of Polly Honeycombe. And then,' he says, commenting upon the fiction of the period,―

And then so sentimental is the Stile,

So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while!
Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture,
The total sum of ev'ry dear-dear-Chapter.

With February, 1768, came Sterne's Sentimental Journey upon which Wesley has this comment :-'I casually took a volume of what is called, "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy." 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. Thus academically launched, we need no longer follow its fortunes.

APPENDIX D

FRAGMENTS OF TRANSLATIONS, ETC., BY
GOLDSMITH.

To the Aldine edition of 1831, the Rev. John Mitford added several fragments of translation from Goldsmith's Essays. About a third of these were traced by Bolton Corney in 1845 to the Horace of Francis. He therefore compiled a fresh collection, here given.