Pardon my reviving the beginning of this post, but I do have two potential citations about half a century earlier —
"And round their enormous great wide table, too, which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the doctor been contented to take my dining-table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is wider, literally wider than the dinner-table here, how infinitely better it would have been!"
“Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said.” As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. “Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!”
Both from Mansfield Park (Jane Austen), first published in 1814. Placing it into the mouth of Mrs. Norris and Maria Bertram, two characters we aren't exactly meant to like, however, I don't think Austen thought much more highly of the usage than modern pedants do.