Noah Webster Part 6

Webster inculcated his views on orthography and p.r.o.nunciation upon all occasions. He wrote, he lectured, he pressed home his doctrines upon persons and a.s.semblies. He was one of the first to perceive the importance of getting his principles adopted in printing-houses. Long after the time of which I am writing he continued to act as a missionary in philology. The present printer of "Webster's Dictionary" remembers that when he was a boy of thirteen, working at the case in Burlington, Vermont, a little pale-faced man came into the office and handed him a printed slip, saying, "My lad, when you use these words, please oblige me by spelling them as here: _theater_, _center_," etc. It was Noah Webster traveling about among the printing-offices, and persuading people to spell as he did: a better ill.u.s.tration could not be found of the reformer's sagacity, and his patient method of effecting his purpose.

His contemporaries were obliged to take sides when so aggressive a spirit was among them. His doctrines were discussed in society and in print. The F ? ? Society at Yale debated upon the adoption of Webster's orthography, deciding in 1792 in favor of it, and reversing their decision in 1794. Webster, by the way, was not unmindful of his college. In 1790, as an encouragement to the study of the English language, he made a foundation for an annual prize to be given to the author of the composition which should be judged best by the faculty; but the foundation does not appear to have been permanent. Just as later he went to the printing-offices to secure a conformity to his orthography, so in the earlier years he had directed his arguments at the schools. In 1798 he published "A Letter to the Governors, Instructors, and Trustees of the Universities, and other Seminaries of Learning in the United States, on the Errors of English Grammar," from which I have already quoted; and appeals to these men, who are to give direction to the education of the young, to free themselves from a slavish dependence upon England. "It will be honorable to us as a nation, and more useful to our native tongue and to science, that we examine the grounds of all rules and changes before we adopt them, and reject all such as have not obvious propriety for their foundation or utility for their object."

Webster's studies had thus been gravitating toward lexicography, and the habits of mind which had been confirmed in his various pursuits were precisely such as would serve best the purpose which he was gradually forming. Dr. Chauncey Goodrich, in the memoir which is prefixed to the Dictionary, remarks upon certain habits formed by him early in life, which, becoming fixed principles, were of inestimable advantage in his labors afterward. While his memory was tenacious, he was a great h.o.a.rder of doc.u.ments and marker of books; he was a careful methodizer of his knowledge; he accustomed himself to a great variety and to unceasing diligence in literary toil, and he was perpetually going back of facts to the principles which he thought to underlie them.

It had been his custom for many years to jot down words which he met in reading, and failed to find in dictionaries, and his labors upon the Spelling-Book and Grammar had familiarized him with the task of discriminating and defining, and had also disclosed to him the deficiencies in that respect of current dictionaries. In 1806 he published "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language," in which he announced, with an amusing foretaste of the larger claims of the "Unabridged," that it contained five thousand more words than were to be found in the best English compends. The Dictionary was rendered still more useful by taking under its protection various tables of moneys and weights, an official list of all the post-offices in the United States, the number of inhabitants in the several States, and new and instructive chronological tables. This, by the way, was the first occasion, I think, when a word-book had departed from the customary boundaries of such literature. I have been able to find but one precedent, Dyche and Pardon's Dictionary, which, published a few years before, had contained a supplementary list of persons and places, arranged alphabetically, and apparently only as a museum of curiosities. This Dictionary had, however, as a part of its regular text the several market towns in England and Wales, with a general description of the places, their situation, market-days, government, manufacture, number of representatives sent to parliament, and distance from London. The encyclopaedic features of a dictionary are clearly of American addition, growing out of the more general and exclusive use of the Dictionary as a book of reference, and increased by the suggestions of compet.i.tion. The Dictionary proper was an enlargement of Entick, and in this preliminary work Webster exercised very little authority in deviating from the generally accepted orthography. The extent of his changes is indicated in his preface:--

"In a few instances I have preferred the orthography of Newton, Prideaux, Hook, Dryden, Whiston, etc., to that of Johnson, as being more a.n.a.logical and purely English, as _scepter_, _sepulcher_. In omitting _u_ in _honour_ and a few words of that cla.s.s I have pursued a common practice in this country, authorized by the principle of uniformity and by etymology, as well as by Ash's Dictionary. In omitting _k_ after _c_ [as in _public_] I have unequivocal propriety and the present usage for my authorities. In a few words, modern writers are gradually purifying the orthography from its corruptions. Thus, Edwards in his 'History of the West Indies,' and Gregory in his 'Economy of Nature,' Pope, Hoole, etc., restore _mold_ to its true spelling; and it would be no small convenience to revive the etymological spelling of _aker_. Cullen, in his translation of 'Clavigero,' follows Bacon and Davenport in the true Saxon orthography of _drouth_; and the elegant Blackstone has corrected the orthography of _nusance_ and _duchy_. The diphthongs in words borrowed from the Latin language have gradually been sinking into desuetude for a century; the few which remain I have expunged."

Dr. Johnson was the Magnus Apollo of lexicographers then, and his bulky fame still casts a large shadow over the world of words. To rebel against his autocratic rule at the beginning of this century was to write one's self down an audacious and presuming sciolist. It is not surprising, therefore, that Webster's criticism of Johnson in this Dictionary and in other places should have exposed him to censure. Dr.

Ramsay of Charleston, a man of consequence in his day, wrote him that the "prejudices against any American attempts to improve Dr. Johnson were very strong in that city." The letter gave Webster his opportunity, and he at once wrote and published his vigorous pamphlet respecting the "Errors in Johnson's Dictionary and other Lexicons," which is addressed to Dr. Ramsay. He takes a very lofty view of the situation. "The intelligence," he writes, of this resentment in Charleston, "is not wholly unexpected, for similar prejudices have been manifested in some parts of the Northern States. A man who has read with slight attention the history of nations, in their advances from barbarism to civilization and science, cannot be surprised at the strength of prejudices long established and never disturbed. Few centuries have elapsed since many men lost their lives or their liberty by publis.h.i.+ng NEW TRUTHS; and not two centuries have past since Galileo was imprisoned by an ecclesiastical court, for defending the truth of the Copernican System, condemned to do penance for three years, and his book burnt at Rome, as containing dangerous and d.a.m.nable heresies. This example is cited as one of a mult.i.tude which the history of man presents to our view; and if it differs in _degree_, it accords in _principle_, with the case now before the American public."

He then, after admitting the value of Johnson's ethical writings, but distrusting his philological attainments, makes good his objections by detailed specifications. He condemns the insertion of a mult.i.tude of words which do not belong to the language, mentioning such unnaturalized foreigners as _adversable_, _advesperate_, _adjugate_, _agriculation_, _abstrude_, _injudicable_, _spicosity_, _c.r.a.pulence_, _morigerous_, _tenebrosity_, _balbucinate_, _illachrymable_, etc., words to which the reader may, if he knows Latin, attach some sort of meaning, but which he would be slow to introduce into his speech or writing. Then he condemns Johnson's reference to writers of the seventeenth century who buried their thoughts beneath c.u.mbrous piles of Latinized English, as in such pa.s.sages as:--

"The intire or broken _compagination_ of the magnetical fabric;" "The effects of their activity are not precipitously _abrupted_, but gradually proceed to their cessations;" "Some have written rhetorically and _concessively_, not controverting, but a.s.suming, the question, which, taken as granted, advantaged the illation;" "Its fluctuations are but motions subservient, which winds, shelves, and every interjacency _irregulates_;" pa.s.sages given as ill.u.s.trative of the words italicized.

"From a careful examination of this work, and its effect upon the language, I am inclined to believe that Johnson's authority has multiplied instead of reducing the number of corruptions in the English language. Let any man of correct taste cast his eye on such words as _denominable_, _opiniatry_, _ariolation_, _a.s.sation_, _ataraxy_, _clancular_, _comminuible_, _conclusible_, _dedent.i.tion_, _deuteroscopy_, _digladiation_, _dignotion_, _cubiculary_, _discubitory_, _exolution_, _exeuterate_, _incompossible_, _incompossibility_, _indigitate_, etc., and let him say whether a dictionary which gives thousands of such terms as authorized English words is a safe standard of writing.... In the 'English-Dutch Dictionary' of Willc.o.c.ke, we find the compiler has translated _ariolation_, _clancular_, _denomiable_, _comminuible_, etc., into Dutch. In Bailey's 'Fahrenkruger,' we see _digladiation_, _dignotion_, _exeuterate_, etc., turned into German. These, or similar words, are by Neuman translated into Spanish, and where the mischief ends it is impossible to ascertain. And what must foreigners think of English taste and erudition, when they are told that their dictionaries contain thousands of such words which are not used by the English nation!"

Webster's next point is that Johnson has exceeded the bounds of legitimate lexicography by the admission of vulgar and cant words. "It may be alleged that it is the duty of a lexicographer to insert and define all words found in English books: then such words as _fis.h.i.+fy_, _jackalent_, _parma-city_, _jiggumbob_, _conjobble_, _foutra_, etc., are legitimate English words! Alas, had a native of the United States introduced such vulgar words and offensive ribaldry into a similar work, what columns of abuse would have issued from the Johnsonian presses against the wretch who could thus sully his book and corrupt the language!" He criticises the accuracy with which Johnson has discriminated the different senses of the same word, and words nearly synonymous. The ill.u.s.trative quotations which bear so much of the praise bestowed upon Johnson's Dictionary he declares to be one of the most exceptionable features, both because no small number of the examples are taken from authors who did not write the language with purity, and because a still larger number throw no light upon the definitions, and are frequently entirely unnecessary. He cites on this last point the pa.s.sages under the word _alley_, five in all, from Spenser, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, and Pope. "Does any reader of English want all these authorities to show the word to be legitimate? Far from it, nineteen twentieths of all our words are so common that they require no proof at all of legitimacy. Yet the example here given is by no means the most exceptionable for the number of authorities cited. The author sometimes offers thirty or forty lines to ill.u.s.trate words which every man, woman, and child understands as well as Johnson. Thirty-five lines of exemplification under the word _froth_, for example, are just as useless in explaining the word as would be the same number of lines from the language of the Six Nations."

His final charge rests on the inaccuracy of the etymology. "As this has been generally considered the least important part of a dictionary the subject has been little investigated, and is very imperfectly understood, even by men of science. Johnson scarcely entered the threshold of the subject. He consulted chiefly Junius and Skinner; the latter of whom was not possessed of learning adequate to the investigation, and Junius, like Vossius, Scaliger, and most other etymologists on the Continent, labored to deduce all languages from the Greek. Hence these authors neglected the princ.i.p.al sources of information, which were to be found only in the north of Europe, and in the west of Ireland and Scotland. In another particular they all failed of success; they never discovered some of the princ.i.p.al modes in which the primitive radical words were combined to form the more modern compounds. On this subject, therefore, almost _everything remains to be done_.... I can a.s.sure the American public that the errors in Johnson's Dictionary are ten times as numerous as they suppose; and that the confidence now reposed in its accuracy is the greatest injury to philology that now exists. I can a.s.sure them further that if any man, whatever may be his abilities in other respects, should attempt to compile a new dictionary, or amend Johnson's, without a profound knowledge of etymology, he will unquestionably do as much harm as good."

A few years later Webster found an opportunity to attack the general subject of lexicography from another side, and one intimately connected with his special work. In 1816 Hon. John Pickering published "A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States of America. To which is prefixed an Essay on the Present State of the English Language in the United States;" he had cited Webster upon various words and plainly was aiming at him in his preface, when he declared that "in this country, as in England, we have thirsty reformers and presumptuous sciolists, who would unsettle the whole of our admirable language, for the purpose of making it conform to their whimsical notions of propriety." Webster at once addressed a letter in print to Pickering, and took up weapons, offensive and defensive, with alacrity and confidence.

"This is a heavy accusation, Sir, from a gentleman of your talents, liberality, and candor," he writes. "Sciolists we may have in mult.i.tudes; but who are the men who would unsettle the whole of our language? Can you name the men, or any of them, either in this country or in England? Surely the finger of scorn ought to be pointed at the men who are base enough to wish, and sottish enough to attempt, to unsettle a whole language. I am confident, Sir, that deliberate reflection will induce you to retract a charge so injurious to your fellow-citizens. It certainly becomes you, and the character you maintain in society, to learn the distinction between an attempt to find what the language is, and an attempt to unsettle its principles. Whether you number me with the thirsty reformers and presumptuous sciolists is a fact which I shall take no pains to discover, nor, if known, would the fact give me the smallest concern." Webster's hand trembles evidently with suppressed anger, but he grows firmer as he goes on. "My studies have been sometimes directed to philology, for the exclusive purpose of ascertaining and unfolding its principles, correcting abuses, and supplying the defect of rules in our elementary treatises. In the course of my researches I have discovered a mult.i.tude of errors and false principles, and numerous defects in such treatises; and as I have pushed my inquiries probably much farther than any other man, I am satisfied that the evidence I can lay before the public will convince you that there is a rich mine of knowledge to be opened on this subject that your English friends have never yet discovered." He takes up Pickering's Vocabulary and rapidly criticises the several entries; he renews his criticism upon Johnson and Lowth, but the most interesting part of the pamphlet is his stout advocacy of the claim of Americans to make and accept changes of language which grow out of their own conditions. The English language was a common inheritance in England and America, and in the necessary growth of a spoken language, Americans had equal right with Englishmen to contribute to the growth; nay, that the American was not a dialect of the English, but a variation; not a departure from a standard existing in contemporary England, but an independent branch from a common stock.

"New words should not be introduced into a copious language without reason, nor contrary to its a.n.a.logies. But a living language must keep pace with improvements in knowledge, and with the multiplication of ideas. Those who would entirely restrain the practice of using new words seem not to consider that the limit they now prescribe would have been as just and rational, a thousand or two thousand years ago, as it is at this period. If it should be said, we have words enough to express all our ideas, it may be truly answered, so had our ancestors when they left the plains of Germany; or when they first crossed the h.e.l.lespont; or when they left the soil of Persia. And what then? Would the words they then used be now sufficient for our purpose. And who can define the bounds of future improvement? Who will venture to allege that men have not yet as much to learn as they have already learnt? The smallest acquaintance with the history of human society and improvement ought to silence the critics on this subject.

"Nor are we to believe that two nations inhabiting countries separated by a wide ocean can preserve a perfect uniformity of language. If a perfect uniformity cannot be produced or preserved in two distant counties in England, how is this object to be effected between the English in Great Britain and their descendants in America, India, or New Holland? Let history answer the question. The art of printing, interchange of books, and commercial intercourse will r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of mutation and diversities; but no human means can prevent some changes, and the adaptation of language to diversities of condition and improvement. The process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river, which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current."

He turns the tables on a writer who points out American barbarisms by showing a number of English barbarisms which had been creeping into use, and declares that in the use of language one nation as well as the other will commit these errors, but he returns again and again to his position that Americans in their use of language are not to wait pa.s.sively upon English authority.

"I venerate," he says, "the men and their writings; I venerate the literature, the laws, the inst.i.tutions, and the charities of the land of my fathers. But I deprecate the effects of a blind acquiescence in the opinions of men, and the pa.s.sive reception of everything that comes from a foreign press. My mind revolts at the reverence for foreign authors, which stifles inquiry, restrains investigation, benumbs the vigor of the intellectual faculties, subdues and debases the mind. I regret to see the young Hercules of genius in America chained to his cradle.... I left college with the same veneration for English writers, and the same confidence in their opinions, which most of my countrymen now possess, and I adopted their errors without examination. After many years of research, I am compelled to withdraw much of that confidence, and to look with astonishment upon the errors and false principles which they have propagated; some of them of far more consequence than any which have been mentioned in the preceding remarks. I wish to be on good terms with the English; it is my interest and the interest of my fellow-citizens to treat them as friends and brethren. But I will be neither frowned nor ridiculed into error, and a servile imitation of practices which I know or believe to be corrupt. I will examine subjects for myself, and endeavor to find the truth, and to defend it, whether it accords with English opinions or not. If I must measure swords with their travelers and their reviewers, on the subject under consideration, I shall not decline the combat. There is nothing which, in my opinion, so debases the genius and character of my countrymen as the implicit confidence they place in English authors, and their unhesitating submission to their opinions, their derision, and their frowns. But I trust the time will come when the English will be convinced that the intellectual faculties of their descendants have not degenerated in America; and that we can contend with them in LETTERS with as much success as upon the OCEAN.

"I am not ignorant, Sir, of the narrowness of the sphere which I now occupy. Secluded, in a great measure, from the world, with small means, and no advent.i.tious aid from men of science; with little patronage to extend my influence, and powerful enmities to circ.u.mscribe it; what can my efforts avail in attempting to counter-act a current of opinion? Yet I am not accustomed to despondence. I have contributed in a small degree to the instruction of at least four millions of the rising generation; and it is not unreasonable to expect that a few seeds of improvement, planted by my hand, may germinate and grow and ripen into valuable fruit, when my remains shall be mingled with the dust." A note is added, in which Webster with grave banter offers a suit of clothes to any English or American reviewer who will find a man capable of explaining the little word _by_, stating its primary signification and its true sense in its several uses and applications.

The spirit with which Webster defended himself was a manly one, and it is noticeable how years of fencing had improved the temper of his weapons. He was keener in his thrusts, more dexterous and supple, and comported himself in these disputes as a man entirely confident of his position. It is not vanity which upholds a man working silently year after year at a task ridiculed by his neighbors and denounced by his enemies. Webster had something better to sustain him than an idle self-conceit. He had the reserve of a high purpose, and an aim which had been growing more clearly understood by himself, so that he could afford to disregard the judgments of others. There was in the outward circ.u.mstance of his life something which testifies to the sincerity and worth of his purpose. He had withdrawn himself into the wilderness that he might free himself from enc.u.mbrances in his work, and with his love of society this was no light thing to do. His family went with him reluctantly; but when did not an enthusiast drag with him to his own light sacrifice the unwilling attendants of his life!

FOOTNOTES:

[13] In the possession of Rev. R. C. Waterston.

[14] "The first by Sir Thomas Smith, secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth; another by Dr. Gill, a celebrated master of St. Paul's School in London; another by Mr. Charles Butler, who went so far as to print his book in his proposed orthography; several in the time of Charles the first; and in the present age, Mr. Elphinstone has published a treatise in a very ridiculous orthography."

CHAPTER VII.

AN AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

At the close of the Preface to his Compendious Dictionary, Webster announced his intention of compiling and publis.h.i.+ng a full and comprehensive dictionary of the language. After answering the objections which candid friends might raise, he added: "From a different cla.s.s of men, if such are to be found, whose criticism would sink the literature of this country even lower than the distorted representations of foreign reviewers,--whose veneration for transatlantic authors leads them to hold American writers in unmerited contempt,--from such men I neither expect nor solicit favor. However arduous the task, and however feeble my powers of body and mind, a thorough conviction of the necessity and importance of the undertaking has overcome my fears and objections, and determined me to make an effort to dissipate the charm of veneration for foreign authors which fascinates the minds of men in this country and holds them in the chains of illusion. In the investigation of this subject great labor is to be sustained, and numberless difficulties encountered; but with a humble dependence on Divine favor for the preservation of my life and health, I shall prosecute the work with diligence, and execute it with a fidelity suited to its importance."

It was 1806 when he sat down to the task, and twenty years of almost continuous labor were expended before the work then projected was given to the world in the first edition of the "American Dictionary of the English Language," in two volumes quarto. Complete absorption in his work, which could yield nothing until it was completed, crippled his resources, confined now in the main to copyright from his Spelling-Book; and in 1812 he removed, as we have already seen, for economy's sake, from New Haven to Amherst. During the next ten years he nearly completed the bulk of the Dictionary, but there still remained much to do in the way of comparison and finer study than his own library afforded. He returned to New Haven in 1822, but further work there showed the insufficiency of material to be had in America; and in 1824, leaving his family, he took with him a son and set out for Europe, for the purpose of consulting men and books. He spent two months in Paris, where S. G.

Goodrich met him. "A slender form, with a black coat, black small-clothes, black silk stockings, moving back and forth, with its hands behind it, and evidently in a state of meditation. It was a curious, quaint, Connecticut-looking apparition, strangely in contrast to the prevailing forms and aspects in this gay metropolis. I said to myself, 'If it were possible, I should say that was Noah Webster!' I went up to him and found it was indeed he."

He was satisfied that he should work to better advantage in England. He went accordingly to Cambridge in the early fall of 1824, and remained there until the following May, using the resources of the University, and making such connections as he could, though he found rather barren sympathy from English scholars, and small encouragement from English publishers. His training and studies, moreover, were not such as to place him in very cordial relations.h.i.+p with Englishmen, and his att.i.tude toward the scholastic deposit of an old nation may be guessed from a pa.s.sage in one of his letters home, in which he writes: "The colleges are mostly old stone buildings, which look very heavy, cold, and gloomy to an American accustomed to the new public buildings in our country."

There is something in the whole undertaking, and in the mode of its execution, which makes one by turns wonder at the splendid will and undaunted perseverance of this Yankee teacher, and feel a well-bred annoyance at his blindness to the incongruous position which he occupied. One is disposed to laugh sardonically over this self-taught dictionary-maker, encamped at Cambridge, coolly pursuing his work of an American Dictionary of the English Language in the midst of all that traditional scholars.h.i.+p. But Webster's own consciousness was of the gravity of his work. "When I finished my copy," he writes in a letter to Dr. Thomas Miner, "I was sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 1825. When I arrived at the last word I was seized with a tremor that made it difficult to proceed. I, however, summoned up strength to finish the work, and then, walking about the room, I soon recovered." This may be a faint echo of Gibbon's celebrated pa.s.sage, but it is inherently truthful, and marks the effect upon him of a sustained purpose, brought, after a score of years, to completion. The Dictionary was published three years after his return to America, and pa.s.sed through one revision at Mr. Webster's hands in 1840. He was still at work upon it when he died, in 1843. It is fair to look to the preface of a great work, especially of one which seems to admit little personality, for an account of the motives and aims of the workman. In following the lines of Webster's preface we discover the principles which we have already noted stated anew and with increasing confidence. He gives reasons why it had become necessary that an English dictionary should be revised to meet the exigencies of American as distinct from English life, and he says finally: "One consideration, however, which is dictated by my own feelings, but which I trust will meet with approbation in correspondent feelings in my fellow-citizens, ought not to be pa.s.sed in silence; it is this: 'The chief glory of a nation,' says Dr. Johnson, 'arises from its authors.' With this opinion deeply impressed on my mind, I have the same ambition which actuated that great man when he expressed a wish to give celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. I do not, indeed, expect to add celebrity to the names of Franklin, Was.h.i.+ngton, Adams, Jay, Madison, Marshall, Ramsay, Dwight, Smith, Trumbull, Hamilton, Belknap, Ames, Mason, Kent, Hare, Silliman, Cleaveland, Walsh, Irving, and many other Americans distinguished by their writings or by their science; but it is with pride and satisfaction that I can place them, as authorities, on the same page with those of Boyle, Hooker, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Ray, Milner, Cowper, Thomson, Davy, and Jameson. A life devoted to reading and to an investigation of the origin and principles of our vernacular language, and especially a particular examination of the best English writers, with a view to a comparison of their style and phraseology with those of the best American writers and with our colloquial usage, enables me to affirm, with confidence, that the genuine English idiom is as well preserved by the unmixed English of this country as it is by the best _English_ writers. Examples to prove this fact will be found in the Introduction to this work. It is true that many of our writers have neglected to cultivate taste and the embellishments of style, but even these have written the language in its genuine _idiom_. In this respect Franklin and Was.h.i.+ngton, whose language is their hereditary mother-tongue, unsophisticated by modern grammar, present as pure models of genuine English as Addison and Swift. But I may go further, and affirm with truth that our country has produced some of the best models of composition. The style of President Smith, of the authors of the Federalist, of Mr. Ames, of Dr. Mason, of Mr. Harper, of Chancellor Kent, [the prose]" happily bracketed reservation! "of Mr. Barlow, of Dr.

Channing, of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, of the legal decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, of the reports of legal decisions in some of the particular States, and many other writings, in purity, in elegance, and in technical precision, is equalled only by that of the best British authors, and surpa.s.sed by that of no English compositions of a similar kind.

"The United States commenced their existence under circ.u.mstances wholly novel and unexampled in the history of nations. They commenced with civilization, with learning, with science, with const.i.tutions of free government, and with that best gift of G.o.d to man, the Christian religion. Their population is now equal to that of England; in arts and sciences our citizens are very little behind the most enlightened people on earth,--in some respects they have no superiors; and our language within two centuries will be spoken by more people in this country than any language on earth, except the Chinese, in Asia, and even that may not be an exception."

It is instructive to compare the preface with the celebrated one by Dr.

Johnson, introducing his dictionary. Webster, filled with a parochial enthusiasm for his native country, exaggerates the necessity for a local dictionary, and antic.i.p.ates the vast audience that will one day require his work. To him language is the instrument not so much of literature as of daily a.s.sociation. He thinks of a dictionary as a book of reference for the plain reader, and a guide to him in the correct use of his vernacular. Johnson, proud of his literary heritage, burdened with a sense of his own inadequacy, at once confesses the dignity of his work and the melancholy of his own nature. He acknowledges the limitation of his own philological attainments, and rests his claims to honor upon the fullness with which he has gathered and arranged the materials scattered through the vast area of English literature. The one sees the subject from the side of nationality, the other from that of literature. Webster is thinking of his own people, Johnson of the un-national tribe of scholars and men of letters. The historical a.s.sociations justify each, for Johnson was distinctly the member of a great cla.s.s which was beginning to a.s.sert its independence of social authority. With all his loyalty to his king, he was at heart a republican in literature, and stoutly denied the divine right of patrons. His dictionary was the sign of literary emanc.i.p.ation; it was the witness to an intellectual freedom which might be in alliance with government, but could not be its tool. The history of English literature since that date is a democratic history. Webster, on his part, was the prophet of a national independence, in which language and literature were involved as inseparable elements. To him books were neither the production nor the possession of a cla.s.s, but necessarily incident to the life of a free people. Hence, in his citation of American authorities, he is undaunted by the paucity of purely literary men; law reports and state doc.u.ments answer his purpose as well. He saw literature as the accompaniment of self-government, and the dictionary in his eyes was a vast school-book, not a thesaurus of literature.

I can hardly expect my readers to follow me patiently through a close examination of the successive editions of Webster's large dictionary, and I have no such high opinion of my own patience as to suppose that I should continue on the road after my readers had dropped behind; but it is possible to make a rough comparison of the first edition of 1828 and the latest of 1880, in order to see what Webster did which needed to be undone, and to form some estimate of the substantial service which he rendered lexicography in that edition which was more nearly his sole and unaided work.

To take, then, the matter of orthography, there are certain general cla.s.ses of words which have borne the brunt of criticism. In his first edition Webster's rule was to omit _k_ after _c_ from the end of all words of more than one syllable, and to retain it in longer forms of the same word only when it was required to defend the hard sound of c. He wrote thus: _public_, _publication_. But Webster, like writers of to-day, was constantly allowing his uniform rule to give way in cases where custom had fastened upon him. Thus he still spelled _traffick_, _almanack_, _frolick_, _havock_, and it was quite possible for his critics to follow him through a long list of words of this cla.s.s and detect his frequent aberration from a uniform rule. Yet, instead of receding from his position, the latest edition advances; a nicer discrimination is made in the etymological origin of the variation, but in point of practice a much more general conformity to the rule is recorded. There can be no question that the _k_ has a foreign air when found in such cases in American books.

Again, Webster omitted the _u_ in the unaccented termination _our_, as _honor_ for _honour_. In this, too, he was not without English precedent. Johnson was singularly inconsistent in this respect, and his influence has extended over English orthography to the present day, so that one cannot take up a well-printed English journal without discovering an apparently arbitrary use of the termination. The usage as recorded by Webster has held its ground, and there is no variation between the first and latest editions, except that the alternative form _Saviour_ is given in the latest as a concession to an undefined sense of sanct.i.ty which would lead to a separation of the word from its cla.s.s.

There is a foot-note in the edition of 1828, in which Was.h.i.+ngton's omission of _u_ is cited as an argument in favor of the form _or_.

There is the vexed form _er_ for _re_ in such words as _center_ for _centre_. It is fair on this point to give the note which Webster originally made in defense of his position: "A similar fate has attended the attempt to Anglicize the orthography of another cla.s.s of words, which we have received from the French. At a very early period the words _chambre_, _desastre_, _desordre_, _chartre_, _monstre_, _tendre_, _tigre_, _entre_, _fievre_, _diametre_, _arbitre_, _nombre_, and others were reduced to the English form of spelling: _chamber_, _disaster_, _charter_, _monster_, _tender_, _tiger_, _enter_, _fever_, _diameter_, _arbiter_, _number_. At a later period, Sir Isaac Newton, Camden, Selden, Milton, Whitaker, Prideaux, Hook, Whiston, Bryant, and other authors of the first character attempted to carry through this reformation, writing _scepter_, _center_, _sepulcher_. But this improvement was arrested, and a few words of this cla.s.s retain their French orthography: such as _metre_, _mitre_, _nitre_, _spectre_, _sceptre_, _theatre_, _sepulchre_, and sometimes _centre_. It is remarkable that a nation distinguished for erudition should thus reject improvements, and retain anomalies, in opposition to all the convenience of uniformity. I am glad that so respectable a writer as Mitford has discarded this innovation, and uniformly written _center_, _scepter_, _theater_, _sepulcher_. In the present instance want of uniformity is not the only evil. The present orthography has introduced an awkward mode of writing the derivatives, for example, _centred_, _sceptred_, _sepulchred_; whereas Milton and Pope wrote these words as regular derivatives of _center_, _scepter_, _sepulcher_, thus, '_Sceptered_ king.' So c.o.xe in his travels, 'The princ.i.p.al wealth of the church is _centered_ in the monasteries.' This is correct."

The two Websters agree in the main, but some of the variations in the first disappear in the latest. Thus Noah Webster gave the alternative forms _ma.s.sacer_, _ma.s.sacre_, preferring the former, and _aker_, _acre_, a curious inconsistency; the editors of the latest edition have dropped these proposed improvements, and have given secondary alternative forms in _theatre_, _metre_, _centre_, _sepulchre_, _nitre_, and perhaps some others. Both accept _chancre_, _lucre_, and _ogre_. It may be said in general that the game on these words is a drawn one, with a stubborn retention of the _re_ form on the part of the most careful writers, and a growing majority in numbers in favor of the _er_ form.

In the edition of 1828 Webster laid down the rule that verbs ending in a single consonant, but having the accent on the first syllable, or on a syllable preceding the last, ought not to double the final consonant in the derivatives. Thus he wrote _travel_, _traveler_, _traveling_. The editors of the latest edition find no occasion to revise this rule, and report that other lexicographers advise a conformity to it, but they record a large number of exceptions to satisfy "the prejudice of the eye." His corresponding rule is "that monosyllabic verbs, ending in a single consonant, not preceded by a long vowel, and other verbs ending in a single accented consonant, and of course not preceded by a long vowel, double the final consonant in all the derivatives which are formed by a termination beginning with a vowel." This applies to _fit_, _fitted_, _compel_, _compelled_. This rule, like the other, is retained by the later editors, though both rules are more exactly framed. No question has been raised upon this point, and the nice correspondence of the two rules is likely in process of time to break down those exceptions to the former which usage now makes familiar.

Does the reader, when he writes, hesitate perilously before the words _distil_ or _distill_, _control_ or _controll_, _recal_ or _recall_? It can only be said that neither Webster nor his editors could frame a rule which they were ready to follow. They agree in their inconsistencies, and have brought over other lexicographers in some cases to their disposition to double the _l_. The indecision, however, which one feels before _skilful_ or _skillful_ is more painful,--are we to say _painfull_? Here again the first and latest editions of Webster are at one with each other, and at variance with old and established usage. The editors of Webster appear to yield the ground a little by conceding that _skilful_, _dulness_, and like words are so written by many. Webster's change in this respect seems therefore to have made no headway except in his own family.

There are other words which may be grouped in cla.s.ses, but I will content myself with a further enumeration, somewhat at random, of words which Webster trifled with, as his enemies might say, or reduced to order, as he would claim; placing in parallel columns the spelling adopted in the first edition and that followed in the latest:--

EDITION OF 1828. EDITION OF 1880.

ax ax } axe}

controller comptroller} controller }

contemporary contemporary} cotemporary }

defense defense} defence}

amba.s.sador emba.s.sador} amba.s.sador}

gantlet} gantlet } gauntlet} gauntlet}

drouth drought

group} group groop}