Antedating of "Nihilist"

[Hugo]

"nihilist" (OED: 1854)

'Observations on the Opinions of Several Writers on Various Historical Political, and Metaphysical Questions' (1817) by Gavin Young contains two "Nihilists" (pages 197 and 209) and three "Nihilist" (pages 197, 210 and 213), one of which is a "Nihilist system". Here's the first of each.

Page 192:

[Begin]
>From the second they may be called Nihilists, and as it has not attracted the attention of those two great Conceptualists, I shall venture, under their auspices, to examine it.
[End]

Page 197:

[Begin]
Lord Bolingbroke who, like other Nominalists, was occasionally a Particularist and Nihilist, (but who has also passages that imply an admission of the whole of the conceptualist doctrine,* and some that may be referred to as a sort of panoptism,†) says: ...
[End]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Z6MIAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA213&dq=nihilist&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ja1KUsL6IMqp4AT8_4DgCQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=nihilist%20OR%20nihilists&f=false

Hugo

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