Apr 212009
Here’s the full quote from the previous post, from Adam Lively’s Masks.
[T]he poor African is … fair game for every minstrel that has tuned his lyre to the sweet chords of pity and condolence; whether he builds immortal verse upon his loss of liberty, or weaves his melancholy fate into the pathos of a novel, in either case he finds a mine of sentiment, digs up enthusiasm from its richest vein, and gratifies at once his spleen and his ambition.
Richard Cumberland, Introduction to Henry (1795)
Cumberland’s derisive tone show that this was written when sentimentalism was no longer a valid idea.