In 1886, on republishing Henry Mackenzie’s 1775 novel The Man of Feeling, University College London English professor Henry Morley underscored the book’s sentimentality by adding an “Index to Tears” that records every instance in which a character weeps — 46 occasions in less than 200 pages:

Hand bathed with tears                     27
I could only weep                          48
Tears, wrung from the heart                51
Tear stood in eye                          65
Dropped one tear, no more                  67
Tears, press-gang could scarce keep from   69
Big drops wetted gray beard                70
Moistened eye                              72
Girl wept, brother sobbed                  74
Tears gushed afresh                        75
Tears flowing without control              96

And so on. At the top he notes, “Choking, &c, not counted.”