Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/370

 WEBSTER

WEBSTER

Xoah and Mercy (Steele) Webster ; grandson of Daniel and 3Iiriam (Kellogg) Webster, and a de- scendant of John Webster, one of the first settlers in Hartford and colonial governor of Connecticut, and on lii.-* mothers side, of William Bradford of Plymouth. He matriculated at Yale in 1774, joined his father's company to aid in repelling Burgoyne's iuvp^ion in che summer of 1777, and was graduated from Yale, A.B., 177S, A.M., 1781. He taught school in Hartford. Conn., was ad- mitted to the bar in 1780. established a school at Sharon, and removed to Goshen, Orange county, X.Y., in 178'2. Wliile there he compiled two small elementary books for teaching the English language, which were the beginning of his Gram- matical Institute of the English Lanr/iiage. which comprised, when completed, a speller, a grammar and a reader. Prii>r to this time all the school books were by English authors, and Webster felt that the pedantry of the English educator would not please the American farmers' sous, and that a young indeftendent nation needed new. sympa- thetic text books. Accordingly in his Gram- matical Institute, quotations from the American patriots were as numerous as those from the classics. After compiling his speller, Webster, realizing the necessity of adequate copyright laws, traveled from state to state, importuning legislators to enact such laws, and in 1790 his efforts bore fruit in the passage by congress of its first copyright legislation. From that time until 1832, Webster worked tirelessly for the ex- tension of authors' rights. After the law was passed in 1790, Webster got a Hartford firm to print 5000 copies of his spelling book as a ven- ture, and it is worthy of note that throughout the rest of Webster's life, whenever he was in need of funds he fell back on the sales of the spelling-book. He resumed school-teaching, started the American Magazine, lectured, prac- tised law and did almost anything to turn a penny. He took a lively interest in politics, showing the greatest confidence in the young re- public that many regarded as a doubtful experi- ment in government. He delivered an address " On the Effects of Slavery on Morals and Indus- try " in 179.3, and the same year, during the French revolution, l>ecame editor of the newly established American Minerva, an anti-French jjaper. He favored Jay's treaty, and together with Chancellor Kent, wrote a series of twelve papers defending it, the first of which Jefferson ascribed to Hamilton. Webster was a strong Federalist, thoroughly loyal to Washington, and after abandoning the Minerva in 1798 as unprofit- aMe, he continued his interest in public affairs, writing Essays on the rights of Neutral Nations, attacking the spoils system at the time of its in- ception under Jefferson, and publishing a reply

to Jefferson's inaugural address. But during all his interest in other matters, he never lost his grasp on his speller. Its large sales necessitated many new editions, and each edition was thoroughly revised, new spellings being adopted and definitions altered. Webster was strongly in favor of phonetic spelling, carrying it to an extreme in his essays, and introducing it judi- ciously in his speUer and dictionary. It is prob- able that his first impulse in this line was given by Benjamin Franklin, with whom he was intimate. Franklin first projected the diction- ary, but thinking himself too old to undertake the work, presented Webster with what manu- script and type he had. Webster named his book the American Dictionary of the English Language, and although his first aim was to be correct, his book differed from the others of its class in that it was intended to go into the Amer- ican household, and foreign words, foreign spell- ings of English words, and pedantic words, so common in Johnson, were dealt with harshly. Webster maintained that the language spoken in America was not a dialect of the English, but a separate, legitimate branch of the parent stock ; that Americans were better authority on good use in America than were Englishmen, and that simply because a word was confined to America, it was not a provincialism. On the whole, Webster's dictionary was decidedly patriotic. Etymology was the branch that attracted him most, and although it was the weakest point in his dictionary, his work in that line was remark- able. He traced words where they could be traced, and guessed at them when they could not, but his genius served him well, and modern comparative philology, of which he laid the foundation, shows some of his longest shots to have been siirprisingly near the mark. Webster began work in 1806 : in 1812 he removed from New Haven to Amherst, Mass., as a matter of economy, but in 1822, having exhausted his own library, he returned to New Haven, and in 1824, realizing the lack of material in America, he went to Cambridge, England, to use the univer- sity library. He finished the dictionarj- in Jan- uary, 1825, and in 1828 the first edition was pu1> lished. It was the first American dictionary, and long after Webster's deatli was the standard in this country. It is of especial interest to note that during the revision of the Bible (1870-80) there were several points of difference between the English and American scholars, and on many of these points the American company agreed with Weljster's views as expressed in a revision of the Bible which he had made long before he compiled his dirtionary. Webster revised his dictionary in 1840, and was engaged in another revision at the time of his death. He was mar-