“Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy.

1. “Oh! my children, my children,” he cried, “have I found you thus? My poor Jack, art thou gone? I thought thou shouldst have carried thy father’s grey hairs to the grave! and these little ones” - his tears choked his utterance, and he fell again on the necks of the children. “My dear old man,” said Harley, “Providence has sent you to relieve them; it will bless me if I can be the means of assisting you.” “Yes, indeed, sir,” answered the boy; “father, when he was a-dying, bade God bless us, and prayed that if grandfather lived he might send him to support us.” “Where did they lay my boy?” said Edwards. “In the Old Churchyard,” replied the woman, “hard by his mother.” “I will show it you,” answered the boy, “for I have wept over it many a time when first I came amongst strange folks.” He took the old man’s hand, Harley laid hold of his sister’s, and they walked in silence to the churchyard. There was an old stone, with the corner broken off, and some letters, half-covered with moss, to denote the names of the dead: there was a cyphered R. E. plainer than the rest; it was the tomb they sought.

2. “Here it is, grandfather,” said the boy. Edwards gazed upon it without uttering a word: the girl, who had only sighed before, now wept outright; her brother sobbed, but he stifled his sobbing. “I have told sister,” said he, “that she should not take it so to heart; she can knit already, and I shall soon be able to dig, we shall not starve, sister, indeed we shall not, nor shall grandfather neither.” The girl cried afresh; Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and wept between every kiss. (Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, 1771)

3. John Earlom (after George Romney), Sensibility. APortrait of Emma Hart (1789)

4. John Earlom (after George Romney), Sensibility. APortrait of Emma Hart (1789)

5. Defining sensibility Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755): 1. Quickness of sensation. 2. Quickness of perception.

6. Defining sensibility Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rdedn, 1797): a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or deformity.

7. Defining sensibility Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rdedn, 1797): a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the nervous system.

8. Defining sensibility Encyclopaedia Britannica (3rdedn, 1797): a nice and delicate perception of pleasure or pain, beauty or deformity. It is very nearly allied to taste; and, as far as it is natural, seems to depend upon the organization of the nervous system. It is capable, however, of cultivation, and is experienced in a much higher degree in civilized than in savage nations, and among persons liberally educated than among boors and illiterate mechanics.

9. Philosophy and sensibility 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics (1711) No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them as soon discerned as felt) than straight an inward eye distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious, or the despicable. How is it possible, therefore, not to own that as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?

10. Philosophy and sensibility Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) That there may be some correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and the person principally concerned, the spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can, to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of situation upon which his sympathy is founded.

11. The Cult of Sensibility Time Mid-eighteenth century, esp. 1740s to 1760s. Archetypal victims/heroes: The chaste suffering women The benevolent, emotionally-sensitive. Man. Stock Vocabulary Benevolence, virtue, esteem, delicacy, transport, kind, honest, tender, fond, melting, swelling, overflowing.

12. The Cult of Sensibility Novel Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768) Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771) Poetry Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1743-5) Thomas Gray, ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ (1783) Drama Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722) Edward Moore, The Gamester (1753)

13. The Attack on Sensibility Detail of James Gillray, New Morality (1798), showing the figure of Sensibility.

14. The Attack on Sensibility Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) […] all your pretty flights arise from your pampered sensibility; and that, vain of this fancied preeminence of organs, you foster every emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the sober suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that when you should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection inflames your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding. Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and, believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the test of truth.

15. The Attack on Sensibility Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791) As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.