[f. CLASSIC + -ISM. Cf. F. classicisme.]
1. The principles of classic literature or art; adherence to, or adoption of, classical style.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. (1857), II. III. V. i. 286. Catholicism, Classicism, Sentimentalism, Cannibalism: all isms that make up Man in France, are rushing and roaring in that gulf.
1840. Mill, Diss. & Disc., Armand Carrel (1859), I. 233. This insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism.
1871. Athenæum, 15 July, 87. A middle course between the conventionalism of the Italo-Byzantine and the naturalism or classicism of the rising schools.
2. A classical (i.e., Latin or Greek) idiom or form.
1873. Earle, Philol. Eng. Tong., § 591. This has been felt to be a Frenchism or a classicism.
1881. Saintsbury, Dryden, vi. 123. To avoid slipping into clumsy classicisms.
3. Classical scholarship.
1870. Lowell, Among My Books, Ser. I. (1873), 188. So far as all the classicism then attainable was concerned, Shakespeare got it as cheap as Goethe did.
