NOAH WEBSTER.
The above portrait of the author of The American Spelling-Book, of which there have been sold thirty millions of copies, and of the American Dictionary, of which his publishers have hopes of selling as great a number, is very life-like; it is from a painting by Professor Morse, and the last time we saw the veteran scholar and schoolmaster, he wore the very expression caught by that always successful artist. Noah Webster's is the most universally familiar name in our history; every body, from first to second childhood, from end to end and side to side of the continent, knows it as well as his own; and he who made it so famous was worthy of his reputation.
Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 16th, 1758. He was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Webster, one of the first settlers of Hartford, and afterwards governor of the colony. In 1774 he was admitted to Yale College. His studies were frequently interrupted during the Revolution, and for a time he himself served as a volunteer in the army, with his father and two brothers. He graduated, with honor, in 1778, in the same class with Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Uriah Tracy, and other distinguished men, and immediately opened a school, residing meanwhile in the family of Oliver Ellsworth, afterward chief justice of the United States. He soon commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781; but the poverty and unsettled state of the country prevented any immediate success in the courts, and he resumed the business of instruction in 1782, at Goshen, Orange county, New-York. It was here that he began the preparation of books for the schools. He was led to do so in despondency of success in his profession; but it changed the course of his life. Having exhibited the rude sketch of his initial effort to Mr. Madison (afterwards President), and Dr. Stanhope Smith, Professor in Princeton college, he was encouraged by them to publish the "First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language." The second and third parts of the series soon followed. A generation has not passed since some of these books were occasionally seen in New England. It may be that here and there a copy may still be lurking in the garret of some ancient family, or on the dusty shelves of a collector of antiquities. There is no more striking contrast than that suggested by a comparison of Webster's "Third Part," as it was familiarly styled, with the admirably printed school books now in every family. Webster's were the first school books published in the United States. In 1847 twenty-four million copies of the Spelling Book had been sold, and for several years the demand for it has been at the rate of a million a year.
Dr. Webster did not confine his attention to his own publications; but having learned that a copy of Winthrop's Journal was in the possession of Governor Trumbull, he caused it to be transcribed and published at his own risk. In this way was given to the public one of the most important memorials of our early history, and the first example furnished of printing the documents, and other materials, illustrative of our original experience. Mr. Webster was poor, and the country had never yet evinced any disposition to encourage enterprises of this sort; but he had always a confidence that it was safe to do what was right and necessary, and therefore disregarded in this, as in many other cases, the opinions of his friends that he would incur inevitable loss.
The peace of 1783 involved the whole country in political agitation, at certain points of which the calmest and wisest well nigh despaired of the republic. At that time the influence of the pen was greater than ever before. It seemed that the decision of principles which were to last for centuries was dependent on the force of a single argument, or the earnestness of one appeal. In this conflict the ambitious and self-relying spirit of Mr. Webster led him to take an active part, and from the peace till the close of Washington's administration, he was an industrious and efficient writer. No period in the history of this country was ever more critical; in none were so many principles subjected to experiment, in none was discussion more able, exhausting, and high-toned.
The first topic which engaged Mr. Webster's attention was the decision of Congress to remunerate the army, then recently disbanded. This measure was violently opposed in all parts of the country. Meetings were held to organize resistance to the law, and two-thirds of the towns of Connecticut were represented in a convention for this purpose. Mr. Webster was then twenty-five years of age, but he contributed to the leading paper of the state a series of essays, signed HONORIUS, which induced a decisive change in the public feeling; and he received for his important services the thanks of Governor Trumbull. In the winter of 1784—5 he published a tract, Sketches of American Policy, in which he advanced the doctrine, that to meet the crisis and secure the prosperity of the whole country, a government should be organized that would act, not upon the states, but directly on the people, vesting in Congress full authority to execute its own acts. A copy of this essay was presented by the author to Washington, and it is believed that it contained the first distinct proposal of the new constitution. About the same time, he exerted himself successfully for what was then called an "International Copyright" law between the several sovereign states; and at a later period he spent a winter in Washington, to procure an extension of the period for which a copyright might be enjoyed. In 1785, he prepared a series of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the larger towns, and in 1789 published, under the title of Dissertations on the English Language. In 1787-8, he spent the winter in Philadelphia, as a teacher. The convention called to frame the new constitution was in session during a part of the year, and after its labors were completed, Mr. Webster undertook to recommend the result to the then doubtful favor of the people. This he did in a tract, entitled An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution. In the next year he established in New-York The American Magazine, but it was unsuccessful. In 1789 he opened a law-office in Hartford, and his reputation, diligence, and abilities, insured business and profits. He was now married to Miss Greenleaf, of Boston, and enjoyed the advantage of one of the most brilliant literary circles of the country, consisting of Joel Barlow, Lemuel Hopkins, John Trumbull, and others who at that time were eminent for their capacities.
But the political excitement of 1793, caused by the proclamation of neutrality, disturbed his plans, and brought him again into the arena of affairs. The sympathy for the new French republic, natural and pardonable as it was, overran all limits of reason. The popularity and influence of Washington were hardly sufficient for the repression of disorder and violence, and an armed espousal of the cause of the French. Mr. Webster was solicited to devote himself to the support of the administration, and means were furnished for the establishment by him of a daily paper in New-York. He accordingly commenced The Minerva, and soon after, a semi-weekly, The Herald, which ultimately received the names which they now retain, of The Commercial Advertiser, and The New-York Spectator.
Another agitation soon followed, if possible, still more alarming—that which grew out of Jay's Treaty with England. The discussions to which this gave rise were earnest, often angry and vituperative, but always able, enlisting the most accomplished men of the country. In these discussions Mr. Webster was, as might have been anticipated, remarkably active. A series of papers by him, under the signature of CURTIUS, had an unquestionable influence on the whole nation. They were extensively reprinted and afterwards collected in a volume. Mr. Rufus King said to Mr. Jay, that they had done more than any others to allay the popular opposition to the treaty. During these conflicts, Mr. Webster often encountered as an antagonist the celebrated William Cobbett, at that time conducting a journal in Philadelphia, distinguished alike for ability and for unscrupulous violence.
While Mr. Webster lived in New-York, the yellow fever prevailed in this city and in Philadelphia, and he wrote a minute and comprehensive History of Pestilential Diseases, in two volumes, which was published in New-York and in London. It attracted much attention in its time, and was referred to with interest during the subsequent prevalence of the cholera. He also published in 1802 an able treatise on The Rights of Neutral Nations in time of War, occasioned by the interference of the French government with the shipping of the world, and its seizure of American vessels, under the proclamation of a blockade. He also published Historical Notices of the Origin and State of Banking Institutions and Insurance Offices, a work of authority and popularity.
In 1798 he removed to New Haven, but retained the direction of his paper at New-York for several years. After disposing of his interest in it he devoted the remainder of his life to literary pursuits.
His first work was a Philosophical and Practical English Grammar, printed in 1807. It was in many respects original, acute, and excellently fitted for the purposes of instruction. It was, however, only one of the studies for his subsequent and far more important performance. For more than twenty years he had been a close student of the elements and sources of the English language; he had gradually, as his various occupations permitted, accumulated and arranged materials for its exposition, and he now felt himself at liberty to forego all other pursuits and ambitions to devote himself for the remainder of his life to the great labors which have made his name so honorably eminent in the history of the intellectual advances of his country and of the Saxon family. The preparation of a Dictionary, under any circumstances, must be regarded as a very formidable task, involving even for an enthusiast the most dry and wearying researches, unenlivened by any of the pleasing excitements which vary the monotony and relieve the tedium of ordinary literary pursuits. Mr. Webster from the beginning had a just conception of the duties and difficulties before him; he was assured that no superficial study or careless execution would command or in any degree deserve approval, in one who followed in the track of Johnson. He was not disposed to make the work of that great man a basis for his own; to be simply an editor, whose duties should be fulfilled by additions of the new words and new definitions introduced in seventy years; he determined to make a new and altogether original work; to study the English language in the writings of its most distinguished authors, to inquire into its actual usage in conversation and public discourse, not by loosely gathered and ill arranged groups of synonymes, but by a clear and precise statement of meanings, illustrated, whenever it should be necessary, by various instances. In this work, Johnson had made a beginning; he first conceived the plan of defining by descriptions, instead of synonymes; and he had introduced into his larger dictionary quotations from the best authors. But his work, valuable as it was, was imperfect, even in regard to the words current in his time, and which he succeeded in collecting. But, if Johnson had perfectly accomplished his design, the lapse of seventy years of such extraordinary and various activity in every department of human action and aspiration, would have rendered a New Dictionary indispensable. New sciences and arts had been discovered, which, in their manifold applications to industry, had changed or wonderfully augmented the technology and common speech of every class and description of workers. New experiments had been made in governments; new institutions had been introduced; literature had assumed new forms; and speculation, with perfect freedom and gigantic force, had forged new weapons for its new endeavors. The necessity for a new Dictionary of the English language, indeed is, demonstrated in the simple fact that the first edition of Webster's great work contained twelve thousand words not in Johnson; the second, thirty thousand. This statement does not, however, give a just impression of the difference between Johnson and Webster, or of the actual labor which Webster performed. The new definitions, many of which were fruits, not more of patient research than of nice discrimination, the arrangement of these definitions, so as to exhibit the history of words as it had been slowly developed, cost the author an amount of toil which can with difficulty be measured. We hazard little concerning the importance or difficulties of the work, when we quote the remark of Coleridge, that the history of a word is often more important than that of a campaign.
The etymology of the language, was a subject to which he devoted much attention, and in which he made great advances. To qualify himself for tracing the derivations of English words, he studied some twenty languages, and wrote out a synopsis of the leading words of each, and incorporated the chief results of this extraordinary investigation in the very full and instructive statement of words of similar imports, which in the larger Dictionary is prefixed to English words, and which he prepared for the press also, as a separate work, of about half the size of the American Dictionary, entitled "A Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages," which is still unpublished.
In 1812, he removed to Amherst, in Massachusetts, where he devoted ten years entirely to these labors. He returned to New Haven in 1822; in the following year he received from Yale College the degree of LL. D., and in the spring of 1824 he proceeded to Paris to consult in the Bibliothèque du Roi some works not accessible in this country, and then went to England and passed eight months in the libraries of the University of Cambridge.
Returning to America, he made arrangements for the publication of his great work, and it finally appeared, near the end of 1826, in an edition of twenty-five hundred copies, in two quarto volumes, which were sold at twenty dollars per copy. An edition of three thousand copies was soon after printed in England.
Dr. Webster was now seventy years of age, and he considered his life-task accomplished; but habits of literary occupation had become fixed and necessary, and after a few months he began to rewrite his History of the United States for Schools. In 1840 he published a second edition of the Dictionary, in two octavo volumes; in 1843, A Collection of Papers, on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects, selected from his various writings in early life; and in 1847 another edition of the American Dictionary appeared, after a thorough revision of it by Professor Goodrich, of Yale College. In this edition very large additions were made, amounting to a fifth of the whole work. There were new words, and new definitions, when needed; careful attention was bestowed on technical terms of science and art; and it was made a general cyclopædia of knowledge. Yet by employing a finer type, and adopting a close yet clear style of printing, the original work, with all these copious additions, was brought within the compass of a single quarto, which has been styled the finest specimen of book-manufacture ever produced in America. A revised edition of the abridgement was issued at the same time, and both volumes have had a circulation which evinces the general appreciation of their value. Several of the New England states, we believe, have furnished a copy of the quarto Dictionary to every school district within their limits, and the legislature of New-York, during its recent session, passed a law for the distribution of some thousands of copies in the school districts of this state also. Whatever may be said of the Dictionary by Dr. Webster, it will not be questioned by the disinterested scholar that it is one of the most extraordinary and honorable monuments of well-directed intellectual labor of which we have any account in the histories of literature or learning. It is as great an advance from the work of Dr. Johnson, as that was from the wretched vocabularies of the English language which existed before his time; and so accurate and exhausting has been the investigation which it displays that no rival work is likely to take its place until sufficient time has elapsed for the language itself to pass into a new condition.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF NOAH WEBSTER.
Much has been said of Dr. Webster's innovations, but for the most part, by persons altogether ignorant of the philosophy of languages in general, as well as of the character and condition of the English language. Dr. Webster attempted, and with eminent success, to reduce the English language to order, and to subject it to the operation of principles. The changes which he made, though in a few instances, necessary for consistency, striking, are much less numerous than is commonly supposed, and even to scholars, with whom the study of languages is not a specialité, they would not be very apparent but for the frequent attempts which are made to prejudice the public against the work. An amusing illustration of this fact occurred a few years ago, when, a concerted assault upon the Dictionary having been made, and sustained for some time, a distinguished author who had a new book in the press of the Harpers, was alarmed by intelligence that they intended to adopt for it Webster's orthography. He wrote to these publishers his apprehensions that the success of his performance and his own good reputation could not fail of exceeding injury, if their design should be executed, and begged them to adopt some other work as a medium for the display of the Websterian innovations. The Harpers replied that he might select his own standard; they believed he had, perhaps unconsciously, followed Webster in his manuscript, and that the several productions of his which they had published in previous years had all been printed according to Webster's Dictionary, which was the guide used in their printing offices.
The incidents of Dr. Webster's life after the publication of the second edition of his Dictionary, in 1840, were few and unimportant. Indeed, with that effort he regarded his public life as brought to a close. He passed through a serene old age, which was terminated by a peaceful death, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1843, when he was in the eighty-fifth year of his age.