Definition of "adulation"

Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter III, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

It is still possible to discuss his place in art, and the adulation of his admirers is perhaps no less capricious than the disparagement of his detractors; [...]

1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, “chapter 1”, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […]