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 hoarder of documents 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 encyclopædic 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 competition. 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 analogical and purely English, as scepter, sepulcher. In omitting u in honour and a few words of that class 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 publishing 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 damnable heresies. This example is cited as one of a multitude 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 multitude of words which do not belong to the language, mentioning such unnaturalized foreigners as adversable, advesperate, adjugate, agriculation, abstrude, injudicable, spicosity, crapulence, 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 cumbrous piles of Latinized English, as in such passages 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 assuming, the question, which, taken as granted, advantaged the illation;" "Its fluctuations are but motions subservient, which winds, shelves, and every interjacency irregulates;" passages given as illustrative 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, assation, ataraxy, clancular, comminuible, conclusible, dedentition, 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 Willcocke, 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 fishify, 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 illustrative 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 passages 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 illustrate 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 principal 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 principal 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 assure 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 assure 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 multitudes; 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 multitude 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.