Antedate of 'wax' = 'speak emotionally'

[Neal Whitman]

I'm wondering how recent is the semantic shift of 'wax' from its meaning of
increasing or becoming to the newer meaning (via 'wax
eloquent/poetic/nostalgic...') of speaking or writing emotionally and at
length. The shift is evident when someone uses 'wax' without a following
adjective ("He waxed about [topic]"), possibly with an adverb or adverbial
particle ("They waxed eloquentLY/poeticalLY/nostalgicalLY...", or "She waxed
ON/AWAY about [topic]...").

This definition does not appear in the OED (though something close to it is
online as a 2006 udpate). I found no attestations in Henrik DeSmet's Corpus
of Late Modern English, which ends at 1920. I found 3 attestations in the
earliest year (1990) of Mark Davies's Corpus of Contemporary American
English. So my preliminary conclusion is that the innovation occurred
sometime between 1920 and 1990, but I'd like a better idea when.

Anyone have pre-1990 attestations?

Neal

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