Webster's Dictionary

“ We know the inadequacy of such hand-to-mouth criticism as that of a monthly reviewer must be upon works demanding so minute an examination as a dictionary deserves. For ourselves, we should wish to own both Webster and Worcester, but, if we could possess only one, we should choose the latter. ”

“ Webster died on 18 June 1682, and was buried on the 21st at Clitheroe. His works show that his active, impressionable mind passed through many phases of religious conviction, and it is difficult to reconcile the authorship of ‘The Judgment Set’ with that of the ‘Examen’ or the ‘Displaying.’ Ward accuses Webster of ignorance (Vindiciæ Academiarum, p. 1) , but he was acquainted with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, and French. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the later editions of Webster, these 'derivations' have been cleared out en masse, and the etymology placed in the hands of men abreast of the science of the time; and the last edition of Webster, the International, is perhaps the best of one-volume dictionaries.
Richardson started on a new track altogether. Observing how much light was shed on the meaning of words by Johnson's quotations, he was impressed with the notion that, in a dictionary, definitions are unnecessary, that quotations alone are sufficient ”

“ The Dictionary was published three years after his return to America, and passed through one revision at Mr. Webster's hands in 1840. He was still at work upon it when he died, in 1843. It is fair to look to the preface of a great work, especially of one which seems to admit little personality, for an account of the motives and aims of the workman. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Within Webster's own life-time a revision of the Dictionary appeared in 1840-1841, and he was at work upon a further revision when he died in 1843.
Our study of Webster has easily led us away from Webster's personal history, except so far as this has illustrated social, literary, and historical movements. There are still living those who, as young men, [Pg 279] were associated with him in New Haven, and these with his grandchildren, as well as his only surviving daughter, bear a memory of his person entirely distinct from its public reputation. ”

“ Webster's Quarto Dictionary, unabridged; containing all the Words in the English Language, with their Etymologies and Derivations. By Noah Webster, LL.D. Revised by Professor Goodrich. With Pronouncing Vocabularies of Scripture, Classical, and Geographical Names. New Edition, carefully printed in a large 4to volume, 31s. 6d. cloth; 42s. calf.
⁂ The only complete work. All the octavo editions are Abridgments.
"All young persons should have a standard Dictionary at their elbow; and while you are about it, get the best: that Dictionary is Noah Webster's, the great work unabridged. ”

“ During the twenty years in which Webster was preparing his dictionary, his income from the spelling-book, though the royalty was less than a cent a copy, was enough to support his family; and before 1861 the sale reached more than a million copies a year. The wide use of this book contributed greatly to uniformity of pronunciation in the United States, and, with his dictionary, secured the general adoption in the United States of a simpler system of spelling than that current in England. ”

“ Throughout his work one may detect a confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as Franklin’s.” But the innovations of Webster were hesitating and often inconsistent; [Pg 298] and most of them have been abandoned by later editors of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language.
What, then, do British writers mean when they animadvert upon “American spelling”? ”

“ At the close of the Preface to his Compendious Dictionary, Webster announced his intention of compiling and publishing a full and comprehensive dictionary of the language. After answering the objections which candid friends might raise, he added: "From a different class of men, if such are to be found, whose criticism would sink the literature of this country even lower than the distorted representations of foreign reviewers,—whose veneration for transatlantic authors leads them to hold American writers in unmerited contempt,—from such men I neither expect nor solicit favor. ”

“ To men who have been accustomed to repose almost implicit confidence in the authors of our principal dictionaries and grammars, it may appear at first incredible, that such writers as Johnson and Lowth, should have mistaken many of the fundamental principles of the language. But that such is the fact, will appear certain to any man who will read a few pages in a Saxon author. For example, those distinguished scholars, following the opinion of Wallis, suppose own, to be a participle of the verb to owe ”

“ His wife survived him four years. They had one son and six daughters. Dr. Webster's life has been written by one of his daughters, as an introduction to his great dictionary, and by Horace E. Scudder, in the “Men of Letters” series (Boston, 1882) . ”

“ Webster never reached the same heights again, and his remaining work, although at times touched with his old spirit, is, as a whole, tame when compared with either the ‘Duchess of Malfy’ or the ‘White Devil.’ ‘The Devil's Law Case; or, When Women go to law the Devil is full of business, a new trage-comœdy,’ has a few scenes that are quite worthy of their author, but the disagreeable plot is inadequately relieved by artistic treatment. ”

“ The latter was again issued in 1900, with a supplement of 25,000 words and phrases, under the supervision of William Torrey Harris, who edited another revision, in 1909, under the title of the New International Dictionary of the English Language. It has frequently been abridged.
Among Webster's other works are Dissertations on the English Language (1789) , a course of lectures that he had given three years before in some of the chief American cities; Essays (1790) ; The Revolution in France (1794) ”

“ OBS. 2.--I do not deny that great respect is due to the authority of our lexicographers, or that great improvement was made in the orthography of our language when Dr. Johnson put his hand to the work. But sometimes one man's authority may offset an other's; and he that is inconsistent with himself, destroys his own: for, surely, his example cannot be paramount to his principles. Much has been idly said, both for and against the adoption of Johnson's Dictionary, or Webster's, as the criterion of what is right or wrong in spelling ”

“ Thus, when the mind considers the form of a tree by itself, or the color of the leaves as separate from their size or figure, the act is called abstraction. So, also, when it considers whiteness, softness, virtue, existence, as separate from any particular objects.
μ Abstraction is necessary to classification, by which things are arranged in genera and species. We separate in idea the qualities of certain objects, which are of the same kind, from others which are different, in each, and arrange the objects having the same properties in a class, or collected body. ”

“ Thomas Webster, then fellow, and afterwards law lecturer, of Trinity College, Cambridge. There was one child of the marriage, a daughter. In 1870 they left Cambridge for London, where Mr. Webster practised his profession. Meanwhile Mrs. Webster published in 1866 a literal translation into English verse of ‘The Prometheus Bound’ of Æschylus. This, and all her subsequent publications, appeared under her own name. She was not a Greek scholar, but her translations—in 1868 appeared the ‘Medea’ of Euripides—obtained praise from scholars, and proved her a sympathetic student of Greek literature. ”

“ There are indeed many words not to be found in Johnson, of American origin, or at least of American adoption, which he enters silently with the belief that they have quite as fair a claim to a place in his Dictionary as if they had been used by Dryden or Addison. I have already quoted the passage in his preface relating to the illustrative quotations; the promise made by Webster is faithfully kept, and the diligent reader may garner many of the brief thoughts of Mason, Smith, [Pg 274] Barlow, and other American writers whose light has now faded. ”

“ The verb to be, except in a few rare case, like that of Shakespeare's 1⁄2To be, or not to be ̧, is used simply as a copula, to connect a subject with its predicate; as, man is mortal; the soul is immortal. The verb to exist is never properly used as a mere copula, but points to things that stand forth, or have a substantive being ”

“ If any thing can add to the impropriety, it is that k is always omitted in the derivatives, musical, publication, republican. Uniformity is a prime excellence in the rules of language, and surely no person will contend for the propriety of musickal, publickation and republickan. Fortunately, most modern writers have rejected the k from words in which it is useless; and it is desirable that dictionaries should add their authority to the practice.
We have a few words of another class which remain as outlaws in orthography. ”

“ Webster entered with zeal into the notion, and held a correspondence with Franklin, in which the young man showed himself so [Pg 191] 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 ”

“ We are conscious of his art, although he does not seem to be conscious of it himself. Yet, however much we may speculate as to the proportions of intentional art and of unaided natural gifts in the style of all he said, there can be no question that he possessed and had mastered the rare combination which confers the lasting quality of literature upon the speech without losing the living force of the written word. It is this most rare achievement which gives to Webster, who never wrote book or essay or verse, his uncontested place in the history of American literature. ”

“ This is the true original import of the word; it has no appropriate reference to two, more than to ten thousand. "Thyder man ne mihte geseglian on anum monthe, gyf man on nyht wicode and ælce dæge hæfde amberne wind." "Thither a man could not sail in a month, if he should watch at night and each day should have a fair wind." Alfred's Orosius, Ch. 1. See also page 61, 63, 79, 219. Lond. 1773. and Sax. Ch. by Gibson, page 185, 186. The second definition of Johnson is therefore the only true one; but not well expressed.
"'Either, says Lowth, is often used improperly for each ”

“ In that year he exhibited at the Suffolk Street Gallery 'Rebels shooting a Prisoner,' the first of those pictures of schoolboy life by which he won his reputation. In 1828 he exhibited 'The gunpowder Plot' at the Royal Academy, and in 1829 'The Prisoner' and 'A Foraging Party aroused' at the British Institution. These were followed by numerous other pictures of school and village life at both galleries. In 1840 Webster was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1846 an academician. He continued to be a frequent exhibitor till 1876, when he retired from the academy. ”

“ On Logan's death in September 1733 Webster assumed the full charge, and in June 1737 he was translated to the Tolbooth church, Edinburgh. Webster's favourite study had been mathematics, and he applied his knowledge in a philanthropic manner. In 1742 he laid before the general assembly a proposal for providing annuities for the widows of clergymen, basing his plan upon actuarial calculations. To obtain information that would enable him to formulate his scheme, he put himself in communication with all the presbyteries in Scotland ”

“ In 1612 Webster joined Heywood and Cyril Tourneur in compiling the volume entitled ‘Three Elegies to the Memory of Prince Henry.’ Webster was author of the second poem which was entitled ‘A Monumental Column,’ and was dedicated to Robert Carr, viscount Rochester; there is a rare separate issue in the British Museum. ”