Noah Webster / American Men of Letters

by Horace Elisha Scudder

It is not an uncommon experience by which a young man strikes at once the note of his career, then appears to wander or experiment, and returns more surely to his original expression, following that steadily to the end. It was thus with Webster. His "Grammatical Institute," inclosing the perennial speller, was his first declaration; then he made ventures in different directions, but returned to studies in language, and finally embodied the results of his life-time in his great Dictionary. In reading biography, we wish to get at the ruling passion of the man; how often the man himself seems bewildered in his search for it, groping in this direction and in that, uncertain, to use Dr. Bushnell's vigorous phrase, if he has yet grasped the handle of his being. It cannot be said that Webster ever laid aside his special studies and resumed them after long intervals. His earliest and most characteristic work, "A Grammatical Institute," was always by him, and the Speller, which emerged from it, became of so much pecuniary importance that it could not fail to determine in many ways his occupation. The "Minerva" from the first had constant advertisements both of "A Grammatical Institute" and of the early volume of "Dissertations"; there were frequent announcements of new editions of the Spelling-Book, and of the rate at which it could be had in quantities. Country merchants began to lay in supplies of Webster's Spelling-Book, when they came to the nearest trading town, as confidently as they bought West India goods or English tools. Webster gave lectures, as he traveled north and south, upon the English language. His reputation was forming upon this line, and it is not unlikely that his partial failure in political and journalistic work was due to his identification with the occupation of a school-master. A more complete account would be that he did not do these things thoroughly well, because his strongest attraction was in another direction. He seems, through the twenty years or more which followed the first publication of his Spelling-Book, to have his hand close by the throttle-lever without knowing it. The practical demands of self-support no doubt controlled his inclinations, and forced him into one situation after another where his choice would not send him, and he spent these years in a struggle for maintenance. Then he was an impulsive, a generous, and an ambitious man. He loved society; he liked the stir of men and the bustle of management. As we have already seen, he was ready to venture all he had upon the stakes which his ardor set up. He took risks in publishing, which could be justified only by his own enthusiasm, and entertained himself with speculations in literature which were agreeable to contemplate, but often disastrous to realize. There is a half-despairing letter to Josiah Quincy[13] which discloses the hard lines of his practical life. Trumbull had jested at Webster's slight capital for house-keeping, and Webster himself reached points in his career where even Institutes and Dissertations seemed to fail him. The letter is dated at New Haven, February 12, 1811. He writes with some irritation, "My name has been so much bandied about that I am quite willing it should be seen and heard no more at present," and then passes to the more important matters in his mind: "I am engaged in a work which gives me great pleasure, and the tracing of language through more than twenty different dialects has opened a new and before unexplored field. I have within two years past made discoveries which, if ever published, must interest the literati of all Europe, and render it necessary to revise all the lexicons—Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—now used as classical books. But what can I do? My own resources are almost exhausted, and in a few days I shall sell my house to get bread for my children. All the assurances of aid which I had received in Boston, New York, etc., have failed, and I am soon to retire to a humble cottage in the country. To add to my perplexity, the political measures pursuing render it almost impossible to sell property, or to obtain money upon the best security. A few thousand dollars, for which I can give security, would place me in a condition in the country to live with comfort and pursue my studies; but even this cannot be obtained till the measures of Congress assume a more auspicious aspect. Adieu, dear sir. The little Band will no doubt do their duty, but what can be done against the army of slaves? Alexander Wolcott!! We must drink the cup of disgrace to the dregs! Yours, in low spirits,

"N. Webster, Jun."

If the letter was an indirect appeal to Mr. Quincy to advance a few thousand dollars on good security, it does not seem to have effected its purpose, and a man with money to lend would not have his confidence in the borrower's capacity to repay it increased by knowing that the time of the loan was to be occupied in making astonishing discoveries in the roots of language. It has often been stated that Dr. Webster supported himself and large family, during the twenty or thirty years he was employed in the preparation of his great Dictionary, mainly by a copyright of one cent or less on his Spelling-Book, and it is quite certain that the several other enterprises in which he engaged never supported him while they were going on, and often resulted in losses. But what a picture the letter presents of an impecunious scholar, bewitched by his pursuit, and sure that it was to end in some vast result! He writes like an inventor who needs but little to enable him to perfect a machine which is to revolutionize labor.

It was only a few years after the first publication of the Spelling-Book, and while Webster was still unmarried and trying his hand at various occupations, that he published "A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings on Moral, Historical, Political, and Literary Subjects." The short-tailed word on the title-page is an oddity intended probably to attract the reader's attention and lead him to look within. The contents embrace thirty essays, originally written or published between the years 1787 and 1790, but before the reader comes upon the table of contents he is likely to stop at the Preface with its antics of spelling. We are tolerably used by this time to reformed spelling, but Webster was a pioneer, and his contemporaries must have looked with some amazement at what they could only think of as deformed spelling. Here they could be told soberly:—

"During the course of ten or twelv yeers I hav been laboring to correct popular errors, and to assist my yung brethren in the road to truth and virtue; my publications for theez purposes hav been numerous; much time haz been spent, which I do not regret, and much censure incurred, which my hart tells me I do not dezerv. The influence of a yung writer cannot be so powerful or extensiv az that of an established karacter; but I hav ever thot a man's usefulness depends more on exertion than on talents. I am attached to America by berth, education, and habit; but abuv all, by a philosophical view of her situation, and the superior advantages she enjoys, for augmenting the sum of social happiness....

"The reeder will obzerv that the orthography of the volum iz not uniform. The reezon iz, that many of the essays hav been published before, in the common orthography, and it would hav been a laborious task to copy the whole, for the sake of changing the spelling.

"In the essays ritten within the last yeer, a considerable change of spelling iz introduced by way of experiment. This liberty waz taken by the writers before the age of Queen Elizabeth, and to this we are indeted for the preference of modern spelling over that of Gower and Chaucer. The man who admits that the change of housbonde, mynde, ygone, moneth into husband, mind, gone, month, iz an improovment, must acknowledge also the riting of helth, breth, rong, tung, munth, to be an improovment. There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it will proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors."

This passage from the Preface, as well as those papers in the volume which follow the same style of orthography or rather cacography, will illustrate well enough the unprincipled character of the reform as it lay in Webster's mind. He acted upon the merest empiricism apparently, without any well-considered plan, making the spelling occasionally conform to the sound, but allowing even the same sounds to have different representation in different words. Indeed, in the extract given above, he appears to be rather a timid reformer, attacking such defenseless little words as is, and respectfully passing by would and offered. The general appearance of those essays in the volume which are printed after Webster's own heart leads one happening upon them nowadays into some disappointment, since they are by no means to be ranked with the humorous writings of later mis-spellers, who have contrived to get some fun out of venerable words by pulling off their wigs and false teeth and turning them loose in the streets.

It is very likely that Webster's first impulse to reform our spelling was given by Dr. Franklin's writings on the subject. As is well known, that philosopher went so far as to devise new characters for compound letters such as th, sh, ng, anticipating many of the later experiment in phonic writing. Webster entered with zeal into the notion, and held a correspondence with Franklin, in which the young man showed himself so ardent a disciple of the old as to win for himself a certain place as the doctor's residuary legatee in ideas. "This indefatigable gentleman," says Webster of Franklin, "amidst all his other employments, public and private, has compiled a Dictionary on his scheme of a reform, and procured types to be cast for printing it. He thinks himself too old to pursue the plan; but has honored me with the offer of the manuscript and types, and expressed a strong desire that I should undertake the task. Whether this project, so deeply interesting to this country, will ever be effected, or whether it will be defeated by indolence and prejudice, remains for my countrymen to determine." The last clause, with all its obscurity, may be taken as a threat rather than as a self-reproach. The entire correspondence between Webster and Franklin is interesting as setting forth a certain excess of experimenting ardor in Franklin and an unlooked-for degree of conservatism in Webster. Franklin was the older man, but he was the more daring. One should credit him, however, with a certain amount of humor in his whims. He played with the English language, somewhat as he amused himself with conferring legacies at compound interest, to take effect in two hundred years, and giving away gravely millions of money by the immediate planting of a few hundreds.

If the first impulse came from Franklin, the controlling reason must be looked for in Webster's patriotism. It was no trifling desire to put into practice an engaging theory, but a conviction of public gain which moved Webster to proclaim his reform. He has left abundant testimony to this effect. After giving a brief historical sketch of the changes to which the English language had been subjected, in the Appendix to his "Dissertations," he proceeds:—