THE AMERICAN LITERARY MAGAZINE. VOL. II. JANUARY, 1848. No. 1. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF NOAH WEBSTER, LL. D. BY CHAUNCEY A. GOODRICH, D. D. Few names are more familiar to the entire population of the United States than that of NOAH WEBSTER. His works have been text-books in a large proportion of our schools for two generations, and are now more extensively used than ever, in almost every part of our land. His dictionary of the English language has stood unrivaled during the last nineteen years for the copiousness of its vocabulary, and the fullness and accuracy of its definitions. It has carried his fame not only throughout our own wide boundaries, but into all the kingdoms of Europe; and has reflected that honor on the literature of our country, which has made it a just object of national pride to every American. In the life of such a man every citizen of the United States has a personal interest. To the young, especially, it affords lessons of instruction and encouragement, which can not be too highly prized. It exhibits the spectacle of youthful talent cast upon the world in the midst of a great revolutionary struggle; animated by an intense love of letters while as yet our nation had no literature of its own; toiling on under poverty, neglect, or obloquy; until it rose by slow degrees into usefulness and distinction, and at last became not only the instructor of millions in the rudiments of education, but the associate of distinguished patriots in defending our early institutions as exemplified in the administration of Washington, and an active instrument in laying the foundations of a literature which is already making itself a place and a name among the most distinguished nations of the globe. Such an example belongs especially to a young country like our own. It could hardly have existed in any other; and it is the object of this sketch, to hold it forth as a guide and incentive to those who may be called upon hereafter to uphold the institutions of their fathers, and to raise the intellectual character of our people to a point of elevation correspondent to the position we occupy among the nations of the earth. NOAH WEBSTER was born on the 16th day of October, 1758, in an agricultural village, which forms the western part of the town of Hartford, Connecticut, at the distance of three miles from the center of the city. He was a descendant in the fifth generation of John Webster, one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut, who was for a long time among the most active members of the executive council, and at a subsequent period the chief magistrate or governor of the colony. On his mother's side he was descended from William Bradford, the second governor of the colony of Plymouth. His father was a man of vigorous intellect but limited education, whose life was spent in the cultivation of a small farm which remained in the family for some generations, and which constituted his only means of support. He was for many years a justice of the peace in the town of Hartford, and an officer of the church in the parish where he lived. The whole family, consisting of three sons and two daughters, were trained up like their father before them, to severe and unremitting industry in the employments of the farm; and it was probably owing to the habits thus formed, of early rising, strict temperance, and vigorous exertion in the open air, that they gained that hardihood of constitution which made them, as a family, remarkable for their longevity. The father reached the advanced age of ninety-two. Of his three sons, one lived to the age of eighty, and the others to that of eighty-five. One of the daughters was more than seventy, and the other had attained to nearly the same period at the time of their death. Until the age of fourteen, Mr. Webster was constantly engaged in the cultivation of the farm, and gave no indications of that intellectual superiority, for which he was afterwards distinguished. His early education had been extremely defective, for the entire course of instruction in the schools of that day embraced hardly any books but Dilworth's Spelling Book, with the Psalter and Testament. At this period he was led by accidental causes which are not fully known, to reflect on the advantages of a collegiate education; and the whole of his native ardor of mind was now awakened and directed to this object. His father for a time opposed his wishes, feeling unable out of his slender income to provide the necessary means. Overcome, however, by the importunities of his son, though wholly unconscious of the results which were to follow, he at last gave a reluctant consent. In the autumn of 1772, Mr. Webster commenced his classical studies with the minister of the parish, the Rev. Nathan Perkins. In consequence of his father's limited circumstances, however, he was still compelled to labor nearly half his time on the farm; but such was his diligence in study under all these disadvantages, that he finished his preparatory course within less than two years, and was admitted a member of Yale College in September, 1774. The war of the revolution broke out the next year, and occa sioned very serious interruptions of the collegiate course. At one period, the students were dismissed for a time, from the impossibility of obtaining the necessary provisions for the commons; and at another the classes were removed, for fear of the enemy, to different towns in the interior, under the care of their respective instructors. In the autumn of 1777, when Gen. Burgoyne was marching from Canada toward Albany, while terror and devastaion were spread throughout the northern counties of New York and the adjoining settlements of Vermont, Mr. Webster, though exempted from military duty, volunteered his services, and marched with his father and both his brothers, being all the male members of the family, toward the scene of action. The regiment to which he belonged was advancing along the east bank of the Hudson when Kingston, which had been fired by a detachment from British ships, was in flames on the opposite side, and the whole country around were fleeing in consternation. Before they reached Albany, however, they were met by a courier, waving his sword in triumph, and crying out as he passed, "Burgoyne is taken! Burgoyne is taken!" It was, perhaps, the most eventful crisis of the war. The enterprise of uniting the British forces in Canada with those in the city of New York, by a line of posts along the Hudson, which might cut off all communication between New England and the southern colonies, was defeated at a blow. An army of British regulars had for the first time surrendered to a body of undisciplined continental troops; and well might every American who had shared in the conflict, or who was hastening to meet the foe, exult in such a victory. Mr. Webster, even in old age, could never speak of it, or of his feelings as the shout of the courier rung through the ranks of the regiment, without a strength of emotion which was often expressed by tears. As additional troops were no longer needed in that quarter, the regiment was dismissed soon after they reached the scene of action, and Mr. Webster returned home. He immediately resumed his collegiate pursuits, and notwithstanding the numerous impediments to study, arising out of the distracted state of the country, he graduated the next year, 1778, with high reputation, in a class containing an uncommon number of men who were afterward distinguished in public life. Among these were Joel Barlow, author of the Columbiad, and minister of the United States to the court of France; Oliver Wolcott, secretary of the treasury of the United States, under the administration of Washington, and subsequently governor of the state of Connecticut; Uriah Tracy, a distinguished member of the senate of the United States; Zephaniah Swift, chief-justice, and Ashur Miller, associ ate judge of the supreme court of Connecticut; Stephen Jacob, chief-justice, and Noah Smith, associate judge of the supreme court of Vermont; besides a number of others who were either members of congress, or leaders of our great political parties, at the commencement of the present century. Having finished his education, Mr. Webster was now to enter upon the world at the age of twenty, without pecuniary resources or the aid of any one, and in the midst of a war which had disarranged all the ordinary business of life, had impoverished the country to a degree of which it is now difficult to conceive, and the termination of which no human foresight could predict. He remained at home for a short time after commencement, and while there his father put in his hand an eight dollar bill of the continental currency, then worth about four dollars, saying to him, "You must now seek your living, I can do no more for you!" Being unable, in these trying circumstances, to prepare for professional life, he resorted for immediate support to the business of school-teaching; which at the low price then paid, and that in a continually decreasing currency, hardly afforded the means of bare subsistence. During two years he taught in Hartford and the immediate vicinity, struggling under the severest difficulties, endeavoring in the intervals of instruction to pursue the study of the law, which he had chosen as his profession, but prevented for the most part by a distressing nervous affection; and subjected at times to very great privations and hardships. In the memorable winter of 1780, particularly, which for extremity of cold and depth of snow, was never equalled by any season on record, he was compelled, as he often mentioned in after years, to walk nearly four miles a day in attending his school, and for many weeks through drifts of snow which completely covered the adjoining fences. His constitution received a severe shock from these exposures. The nex year he taught a classical school at Sharon, Con. Here he made the acquaintance of a French gentleman of high attainments in the Latin and Greek classics, the Rev. Mr. Tetard who had been driven by the enemy from New Rochelle, where he was pastor of a church composed of descendants from the French Hugonots. Mr. Webster derived much benefit from the society of this gentleman, especially in the study of the French language and literature, which he pursued with great eagerness and delight under his direction. In 1782, being still unable to enter on professional pursuits, he crossed the Hudson and proceeded to Goshen, in the county of Orange, New York, in pursuit of some employment. Here he succeeded with much difficulty in establishing a classical school; and here for the first time he received his pay for tuition in money, and not in depreciated continental paper, which was the general currency of the country. But his income was proportionally scanty; it was a mere pittance which hardly furnished him the means of support. His health was greatly impaired by his incessant occupation as a teacher, and his endeavors at the same ime to carry on a course of severe study. Ten years had now elapsed since he commenced his preparation for college, and he saw no results—no advance toward entering on professional life. The prospects for business throughout the whole country, were more gloomy than ever, and no one could discover the remotest hope of improvement. Under these circumstances, his spirits utterly failed him; he gave way to the most gloomy forebodings, and sunk for a number of months into a state of the deepest despondency. As a relief to his mind in this condition, he undertook an employment-perhaps we may say he was directed to it by that Providence which was training him up for the service of his country-which exerted a powerful influence on the whole of his subsequent life. It was that of preparing a series of books for schools, and especially a substitute for that miserable compilation, Dilworth's Spelling Book, which was the only one then in use. As he advanced, he became interested in the employment far beyond his expectations. The elasticity of his mind was restored; he pursued the task with eagerness and delight; his long and painful experi ence as a teacher proved to be the very discipline he needed for the production of such a work; and he finished the first draught of his Spelling Book during the summer of 1782. After visiting New York, Princeton and Philadelphia, to obtain advice and assistance, he repaired to Hartford in the spring of 1783, to make arrangements, if possible, for the publication of the work. But here he was met by the most serious difficulties. Most persons regarded his design as useless, and many had strong objections to some of the changes which he proposed. One of these related to such words as nation, salvatim, &c., which he directed to be sounded, in spelling, as they are pronounced, nashun, salvashun; but which were then prolonged in all the schools, into na-ci-on, sal-va-ci-on, &c. The prejudice against this innovation was quite strong; and was humorously exemplified, a few years after in a story related to Mr. Webster respecting an old Scotch elder of Pennsylvania, by one who witnessed the occurrence. When the Spelling Book, under the teaching of some Yankee adventurer, had made its way into a small valley of the Alleghany mountains, where the good man lived, and the heresies it contained began to spread among the people, the store-keeper at the Four-Corners saw him riding down furiously one morning, and calling out as he drew up at the door, "Have ye heard the news, mon? Do ye ken what's gaen on? Here's a fellow with a book made by a Yankee lad called Wobster, teaching the children clean agenst the Christian religion!" "Ah! how so!" แ Why, ye ken we canna sing the psalms of David without having salvation and such words in four syllables, sal-vaci on; and he's making all the children say salvashun! It's clean agenst the worship of God!" Though the prejudice was not quite so strong in New England, there were real and very great difficulties in making a change of school books; and among all Mr. Webster's friends, only two were found to encourage him with the hope of success, namely, John Trumbull and Joel Barlow. No printer would undertake the publication on his own responsibility; and Mr. Webster was at last obliged to incur the |