[Ads-l] Antedating of "Romantic" (OED Noun Sense 3.)

[Shapiro, Fred]

romantic, n. (OED 3., 1827)

1816 New Monthly Magazine 1 Dec. 433 (Google Books)  Let the _Romantics_ of Germany and England say what they please, they are obliged at last to admit, that the stage upon which the master-pieces of a Corneille, a Moliere, a Racine, a Voltaire, are represented, deserves the preference to those upon which are produced the monstrous abortions of Shakspeare, Otway, and Lillo, the dramatised novels of Schiller, and the rhapsodies of Kotzebue.

1821 London Literary Gazette 2 June 341 (Google Books)  The dispute between the Romantics and the Classics in the drama, is too little touched upon.

NOTE: The 1821 citation above also appears to be an antedating of _classic_, n. 3.b. (OED 1885).

Fred Shapiro

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org