Born at Hartford, Conn., Oct. 16, 1758: died at New Haven, Conn., May 28, 1843. An American lexicographer and author. He entered Yale in 1774; served in the Revolutionary War in 1777; graduated at Yale in 1778; and was admitted to the bar in 1781. He taught in various places, and in 1788 settled in New York as a journalist. In 1798 he removed to New Haven, and in 1812 to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he took part in the founding of the college and was the first president of its board of trustees. He returned to New Haven in 1822. He published “A Grammatical Institute of the English Language” (1783–85; comprising spelling-book, grammar, and reader), “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), “A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language” (1806), and “A Grammar of the English Language” (1807). He is best known from his large “American Dictionary of the English Language” (1828; 2d ed. 1841). Among his other works are “Rights of Neutrals” (1802), “Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects” (1843), and a brief history of the United States (1823).

Personal

  Feb. 18,—At evening rode to Wethersfield [from Hartford, where he was then living] with the ladies, who reminded us of the mile-stones and bridges…. Feb. 19, P. M.—Rode to East Windsor; had a clergyman with us, who sang an excellent song. Mile-stones and bridges almost totally neglected.

  Webster has returned, and brought with him a pretty wife. I wish him success, but I doubt, in the present decay of business in our profession [the law], whether his profits will enable him to keep up the style he sets out with. I fear he will breakfast upon Institutes, dine upon Dissertations, and go to bed supperless.

  I have never been a hard student, unless a few years may be excepted; but I have been a steady, persevering student. I have rarely used lamp or candle light, except once, when reading law, and then I paid for my imprudence, for I injured my eyes. My practice has usually been to rise about half an hour before the sun, and make use of all the light of that luminary. But I have never or rarely been in a hurry. When I first undertook the business of supporting General Washington’s administration, I laboured too hard in writing or translating from the French papers for my paper, or in composing pamphlets. In two instances I was so exhausted that I expected to die, for I could not perceive any pulsation in the radial artery; but I recovered. While engaged in composing my “Dictionary,” I was often so much excited by discoveries I made, that my pulse, whose ordinary action is scarcely 60 beats to the minute, was accelerated to 80 or 85. My exercise has not been violent nor regular. While I was in Amherst I cultivated a little land, and used to work at making hay, and formerly I worked in my garden, which I cannot now do. Until within a few years, I used to make my fires in the morning, but I never or rarely walked before breakfast. My exercise is now limited to walking about the city to purchase supplies for my family…. I began to use spectacles when fifty years of age, or a little more, and that was the time when I began to study and prepare materials for my “Dictionary.” I had had the subject in contemplation some years before, and had made memorandums on the margin of Johnson’s “Dictionary,” but I did not set myself to the work till I wore spectacles. When I finished my copy 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.

  To men of the present generation, Dr. Webster is known chiefly as a learned philologist; and the natural inference would be, that he spent his whole life among his books, and chiefly in devotion to a single class of studies. The fact, however, was far otherwise. Though he was always a close student,—reading, thinking, and writing at every period of his life,—he never withdrew himself from the active employments of society. After his first removal to New Haven, he was for a number of years one of the aldermen of the city, and judge of one of the state courts. He also frequently represented that town in the legislature of the state. During his residence at Amherst, he was called, in repeated instances, to discharge similar duties, and spent a part of several winters at Boston as a member of the General Court…. In the discharge of his duties, Dr. Webster was watchful, consistent, and firm. Though immersed in study, he kept in his hands the entire control of his family arrangements, down to the minutest particulars. Everything was reduced to exact system; all moved on with perfect regularity and order, for method was the presiding principle of his life. In the government of his children there was but one rule, and that was instantaneous and entire obedience. This was insisted upon as right,—as, in the nature of things, due by a child to a parent. He did not rest his claim on any explanations, or on showing that the thing required was reasonable or beneficial…. In his religious feelings, Dr. Webster was remarkably equable and cheerful. He had a very strong sense of the providence of God, as extending to the minutest concerns of life. In this he found a source of continual support and consolation, under the severe labors and numerous trials which he had to endure. To the same divine hand he habitually referred all his enjoyments; and it was known to his family that he rarely, if ever, took the slightest refreshment, of any kind, even between meals, without a momentary pause, and a silent tribute to God as the giver. He made the Scriptures his daily study.

  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 circumstance 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 encumbrances 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!

Spelling Book

  Noah Webster, who wrote the earliest American spelling-book, was the first author whose writings I ever read; and what a work it was to my young imagination! In its externals, as well as its internals, it is before me now precisely as it was nearly half a century ago. The narrow yellow-white leathern back, with not quite all the hairs tanned out of it in some copies; the palish-blue cover; the thick, whitish paper, whose smell I inhale as freshly at this moment as when it first pervaded my young nostrils—all are “present with me.” And its contents! How palpable are their first impressions upon the mind!—from the pregnant moral inculcations in one syllable, onward to the reading-lessons in wider and taller words, which, in certain parts, sometimes bothered “us boys” not a little: yet not much, either, after encountering the spelling-lessons that preceded them, which enabled me generally to conquer the most formidable of them; especially after I had “gone up to the head” in spelling them in the longest class in the old log school-house. The moral and patriotic inculcations of those one-syllable lessons are familiar to tens of thousands of readers at this moment, who perhaps have not looked into the good old book for the last thirty years; and yet of which more than one million of copies have been sold every twelve months!

  The final success of the little book has been quite beyond definite computation, but a few figures will show something of the course it has run. In 1814, 1815, the sales averaged 286,000 copies a year; in 1828 the sales were estimated to be 350,000 copies. In 1847 the statement was made that about twenty-four million copies of the book had been published up to that time, and that the sale was then averaging a million of copies a year. It was also then said, that during the twenty years in which he was employed in compiling his “American Dictionary,” the entire support of his family was derived from the profits of this work, at a premium for copyright of five mills a copy. The sales for eight years following the Civil War, namely 1866–1873, aggregated 8,196,028.

  But what pleasant memories remain with those who long ago studied Webster’s “Spelling-Book!” The very pages in their precise form are pictured for us on indelible tablets. It was a great triumph when the young student got to “baker,” for it was the first step away from monosyllables. But it seemed like a long road to him before he would get to “immateriality” and “incomprehensibility.” How or when he was to do it seemed incomprehensible enough then. Those who, in beginning to read, discovered that “She fed the old hen,” “Ann can hem my cap,” “Fire will burn wood and coal,” “A tiger will kill and eat a man,” and other similar facts, little thought that in all their after life nothing they might learn would ever seem so touching and significant. On this little book, by whose aid we have since read the historians, novelists, and poets, and been inducted into fields of various learning, there rests now a gleam and fascination that no poet or novelist can give, or ever gave. It seems like that light that never was on sea or land. It is the twilight halo tinting the first far boundary of youth; and restores now a little glimpse, almost, of a pre-existent world.

  Webster’s “Speller” (dating from 1783), which supplanted “The New England Primer,” is almost literature by reason of its admirable fables.

American Dictionary, 1828–41

  Called with Mr. Gibbs on the celebrated Noah Webster, and passed three-quarters of an hour in his study. He is now absorbed in the project of publishing his great “Dictionary,”—showed me his manuscript, and explained his plan. There can be no doubt of Mr. Webster’s very profound researches into the origin and structure of the English language, and particularly in tracing the analogy of languages. He is an enthusiast, and so must any man be who will make progress in any pursuit…. For the learned I am fully convinced that Mr. Webster’s “Dictionary” will have great value, although it may contain objectionable points and peculiarities, which a mind of another cast would not have admitted. The preface will be the most difficult part for him to execute. In all his publications he has manifested a singular want of judgment in estimating the comparative value of his own attainments, and in setting forth what he deems the most important discoveries which he has made. His friends in New Haven are aware of this foible, and they are resolved to counteract it in the present instance as far as the nature of the case will admit…. The author does not contemplate publishing it at present, perhaps never, as he says he was assured in Europe that such a work would not pay for the printing. I am glad to have seen Noah Webster, for I respect him for his great attainments, and for the noble, untiring zeal with which he has devoted a whole life to the investigation of an important though neglected subject. The example is worthy of all praise. Let those who condemn, first do as much, and do it better.

  About thirty-five years ago, I began to think of attempting the compilation of a Dictionary. I was induced to this undertaking, not more by the suggestion of friends, than by my own experience of the want of such a work while reading modern books of science. In this pursuit I found almost insuperable difficulties, from the want of a dictionary for explaining many new words which recent discoveries in the physical sciences had introduced into use. To remedy this defect in part, I published my “Compendious Dictionary” in 1806, and soon after made preparations for undertaking a larger work…. I had not pursued this course more than three or four years before I discovered that I had to unlearn a great deal that I had spent years in learning, and that it was necessary for me to go back to the first rudiments of a branch of erudition which I had before cultivated, as I had supposed, with success. I spent ten years in this comparison of radical words, and in forming a “Synopsis of the principal Words in twenty Languages, arranged in Classes under their primary Elements or Letters.” The result has been to open what are to me new views of language, and to unfold what appear to be the genuine principles on which these languages are constructed. After completing this “Synopsis,” I proceeded to correct what I had written of the “Dictionary,” and to complete the remaining part of the work. But before I had finished it, I determined on a voyage to Europe, with the view of obtaining some books and some assistance which I wanted, of learning the real state of the pronunciation of our language in England, as well as the general state of philology in that country, and of attempting to bring about some agreement or coincidence of opinions in regard to unsettled points in pronunciation and grammatical construction. In some of these objects, I failed; in others, my designs were answered…. To that great and benevolent Being, who, during the preparation of this work, has sustained a feeble constitution amidst obstacles and toils, disappointments, infirmities and depression,—who has borne me and my manuscripts in safety across the Atlantic, and given me strength and resolution to bring the work to a close,—I would present the tribute of my most grateful acknowledgments. And if the talent which he intrusted to my care has not been put to most profitable use in his service, I hope that it has not been “kept laid up in a napkin,” and that any misapplication of it may be graciously forgiven.

  I imagine that Webster’s dictionary will never be current. The plan of citing names, instead of passages, is unsatisfactory and unfair.

  The appearance of this dictionary, considering the circumstances under which it was begun, the amount of time and labor bestowed upon its composition, and the value of the improvements actually made, is an event upon which we may well congratulate the public. The proper effect of the author’s labors in the cause of the language of his country, will not fail, sooner or later, to be produced. It will be seen in the better understanding of authors, who will ever be the boast of the English tongue; it will be seen in the more correct use of words, in the check which will be put on useless innovations, in the cleared distinction generally marked between new words which are necessary, and those which are merely the offspring of caprice, and we will add, in the increased respect, we hope, with which the author will be viewed, for his talents, learning, and persevering industry…. Our criticisms on this work do not affect its substantial merits; these are manifest, and in despite of all attempts to conceal or decry them, they will be ultimately seen and acknowledged in their real number and value…. No new English dictionary will hereafter serve, either at home or abroad, for popular use, which does not contain many of the additions and corrections of this.

  One is ashamed to linger on cases so mild as those,—coming, as one does, in the order of atrocity, to Elphinston, to Noah Webster, a Yankee,—… Noah would naturally have reduced us all to an antediluvian simplicity. Shem, Ham and Japhet probably separated in consequence of perverse varieties in spelling,—so that orthographical unity might seem to him one condition for preventing national schisms.

  He was regarded with suspicion, and frequently openly opposed: for his well known views as a reformer of the language laid him particularly open to attack; since speech being common property, every one was bound more or less to question his proceedings. Though the dictionary bearing Webster’s name is now in very general use, it has secured this result by the number of its words, and particularly the extent of its scientific terms and the accuracy of their definitions, in spite of the peculiar Websterisms of orthography. His mistake, as the compiler of a dictionary, at the outset was, in seeking to amend the language, while his duty was simply to record the use of words by the best authors. In the attempt to impose new conditions, and with his American innovations, he placed himself beyond the recognition of the highest authorities of the language in the universities of England and the colleges of America.

  His “Dictionary” is rapidly approaching the position of highest authority, especially among men of purest taste and most comprehensive knowledge.

  In the beauty, conciseness, and accuracy of its definitions, and in the department of etymology, it is superior to all other English dictionaries. The learning and ability with which he prosecuted the abstruse and difficult etymological investigations were generally acknowledged, both at home and abroad, and have laid the foundation of a wide-spread and enduring reputation.

  He worked alone, and his solitariness was not wholly due to his idiosyncrasies. It was in part the penalty paid by a student of the time. The resolution and self-reliance of an American were his, and so was the individuality. That such enterprises are not now conducted single-handed is owing not to a lack of courage but to the greater complexity of life, the more constant sense of interdependence, the existence of greater solidarity in intellectual pursuits. Webster was unable to believe that a company of scholars could ever be formed who should carry forward a revision of the Bible, and therefore, he made the attempt himself. Individual criticism has been abundant ever since, but no one, however learned or popular, has ever been able to impress his work upon the community. The most carefully organized body of scholars submits the results of ten years’ conference to the votes of the world. The history of Webster’s Dictionary is parallel with the growth of national life out of individualism.

General

  It may be said that the name of NOAH WEBSTER, from the wide circulation of some of his works, is known familiarly to a greater number of the inhabitants of the United States, than the name, probably of any other individual except the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. Whatever influence he thus acquired was used at all times to promote the best interests of his fellowmen. His books, though read by millions, have made no man worse. To multitudes they have been of lasting benefit, not only by the course of early training they have furnished, but by those precepts of wisdom and virtue with which almost every page is stored.