The story
Coined by British cultural critic John Ruskin in 1856 in his work Modern Painters. Here, fallacy does not refer to a logical fallacy but should be understood as “a falsehood, something that is untrue”, while pathetic here means “caused by an excited state of the feelings”; thus, “emotional misrepresentation”, not “contemptible illogic”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.