THE GRAMMATICAL INSTITUTE.
"In the year 1782, while the American army was lying on the bank of the
Hudson, I kept a classical school in Goshen, Orange County, State of New
York. I there compiled two small elementary books for teaching the
English language. The country was then impoverished, intercourse with
Great Britain was interrupted, school-books were scarce and hardly
attainable, and there was no certain prospect of peace."
These words have doubtless a familiar sound to the reader. They form the
phrases which Webster never wearied of repeating, and whenever he had
occasion to refer to the beginning of his literary career he fell
naturally into this paragraph. It became a formula for the expression of
a fact which was embedded in his mind as a stone marking a point of
departure. There is a consciousness in it of the beginning of a great
enterprise, and certainly, when one considers the immense stream which
has flowed from this little rill, he may seriously stand and gaze at the
young school-master and his two small elementary books. The modesty of
the statement agrees with the size of the books, but not with the
expansiveness of the composite title. The work projected by Webster was
"A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, comprising an Easy,
Concise, and Systematic Method of Education, designed for the Use of
English Schools in America." The "Institute" was to be in three parts,
which were, in brief, a speller, a grammar, and a reader. The formal and
dignified title of the work was the tribute which Webster paid to
old-fashioned scholarship; and it is curious to see the evolution by
which it finally became the well-known "Elementary." One or two ideas
were working their way out in Webster's mind. In the first place he did
not like the book generally in use, "Dilworth's New Guide to the English
Tongue;" then he saw with more or less clearness that, in the separation
from England that was fast taking place, the people in America must
necessarily have their own school-books, and his mind ran forward even
to a belief in a distinct and separate literature and a considerable
difference in language. Yet at this time I am not sure that he
appreciated the pregnant truth, so familiar to us now, of a vital
connection between popular education and popular sovereignty. He began
to see it, and was influenced by it; but his work was mightier than he
then knew, for he had not been educated in a free republic.
How simple and slight a change in methods of text-books marks the
introduction of Webster's spelling-book, from which millions of
Americans have learned to spell the names on a ballot! Lay Dilworth and
a first Webster side by side: the likeness and the difference of the two
are apparent. It is clear that Dilworth served as a model, and that
Webster's book started simply as an improvement upon the English
original. Even in externals there is a similarity. The early editions of
Webster had a dim, hacked-out engraving on wood of Noah Webster, Jr.,
Esq., to correspond with the scarcely more refined portrait of Tho.
Dilworth which prefaces the "New Guide." Both books have long lists of
words, proceeding from the simplest combination to words of five
syllables, and even in Dilworth to proper names of six syllables,
containing such retired words as Abelbethmaacah; but in Webster these
lists proceed upon a regular gradation of pronunciation, while in
Dilworth they follow such confusing and arbitrary order as is indicated
by the heading, "Words of five, six, etc., letters, viz.: two vowels and
the rest consonants; the latter vowel serving only to lengthen the sound
of the former, except where it is otherwise marked," which is nearly as
luminous as a direction in knitting. Each offers illustrated fables as
reading lessons, and shorter sentences are provided for first lessons in
reading. In Dilworth these are, without exception, taken from the
Psalms, or made up to order to look like apocryphal psalms; in Webster
there is a suggestive divergence, for while, as in Dilworth, the first
sentence is, "No man may put off the law of God," it takes a very few
pages for the child to reach the very practical passage, "As for those
boys and girls that mind not their books, and love not church and
school, but play with such as tell tales, tell lies, curse, swear, and
steal, they will come to some bad end, and must be whipt till they mend
their ways." The child brought up on Dilworth is practiced until nearly
the last page of the work upon the lesson of the first sentence, with
variations. Other differences would be suggested at once by the use of
the two books. In Dilworth the child learns all manner of English proper
names and abbreviations likely to be of use, such as Ldp., Bp., Rt.
Wpful, Rt. Honble, Ast. P.G.C. and P.M.G.C., the last two standing, as
the reader has of course already guessed, for Astronomy Professor of
Gresham College, and Professor of Music at Gresham College, which we
politely take to have been Tho. Dilworth's Alma Mater. In a note at the
foot of the column, T. D. adds: "It argues a disrespect and slighting to
use contractions to our betters." The character of this torture of the
innocent was probably determined by the use for which it was intended in
England, as indicated by Mr. Dilworth's dedication "To the Reverend and
Worthy Promoters of the several Charity Schools in Great Britain and
Ireland."
Webster's Institute, on the other hand, was plainly meant for the farmer
boys and girls of his country. "The spelling-book," he says in one of
his essays, "does more to form the language of a nation than all other
books," and the man who first supplied our young nation with a
spelling-book has undoubtedly affected its spelling habits more than any
other single person. But Webster was a moralist and a philosopher as
well as a speller. He was by no means restricted in his ambition to the
teaching of correct spelling; he aimed to have a hand in the moulding of
the national mind and the national manners. In his preface to "The
American Spelling-Book," he says: "To diffuse an uniformity and purity
of language in America, to destroy the provincial prejudices that
originate in the trifling differences of dialect and produce reciprocal
ridicule, to promote the interest of literature and the harmony of the
United States, is the most earnest wish of the author, and it is his
highest ambition to deserve the approbation and encouragement of his
countrymen." His spelling-book, accordingly, in its early editions
contained a number of sharp little warnings in the form of footnotes,
which imply that he seized the young nation just in time to prevent the
perpetuation of vulgar errors, since these, if they once became
universal, would have compelled the hereditary Webster to make them the
basis of orthoepic canons. Thus, _ax_ is reprobated when _ask_ is
intended; Americans were to say _wainscot_, not _winch-cott_; _resin_,
not _rozum_; _chimney_, not _chimbly_; _confiscate_, not _confisticate_.
Since these warnings disappeared after a few years it may be presumed
that he regarded the immediate danger as passed; but the more
substantial matters of good morals came to have greater prominence, and
in addition to the columns of classified words, which constitute almost
the sole contents of the earliest edition, there came to be inserted
those fables and moral and industrial injunctions, with sly reminders of
the virtue of Washington, which have sunk into the soft minds of
generations of Americans. There was a Federal catechism, and a good deal
of geographical knowledge regarding counties and county towns, to be
taken economically in the form of spelling lessons. The successive
editions became way-marks of the progress of the nation, and so
important did the book rapidly become that though its compiler was fast
throwing off the bondage of Anglican spelling, he never dared to make
the book conform to his own principles; venturing only to hint in his
preface at the orthographic reform which he longed to make. "The
spelling," he says, "of such words as publick, favour, neighbour, head,
prove, phlegm, his, give, debt, rough, well, instead of the more natural
and easy method: public, favor, nabor, hed, proov, flem, hiz, giv, det,
ruf, wel, has the plea of antiquity in its favor; and yet I am convinced
that common sense and convenience will sooner or later get the better of
the present absurd practice."
The pictures which came to bring art as an adjunct in impressing the
young mind were of the order already familiar in the New England Primer,
ingenuous in their simple straightforwardness and of uncompromising
faithfulness to nature. The fable of the Boy that stole Apples, which I
have never been able to trace back of Webster, but through him has
become a part of our mental furniture, is briskly set forth at one of
its points in a queer wood-cut. The old man in his continental coat has
only gone as far as words, and the boy is just reaching out his arm for
the round apple near him. If another picture had been given, the old
man's coat would have been off and that boy would have been seen
slithering down the trunk of the tree; and in the third fable of the Fox
and the Swallow there is a phalanx-like arrangement of the tormenting
flies which appeals strongly to the imagination.
The second part of a Grammatical Institute was a grammar,--"a plain and
comprehensive grammar founded on the true principles and idioms of the
language." Webster had fallen upon Lowth's "Short Introduction to the
English Grammar," and upon the basis of that book drew up his grammar
for the use of American youth. But the principal result of his work
seems to have been the introduction of his own mind to the study. Six
years afterward he wrote: "The favorable reception of this prompted me
to extend my original plan, which led to a further investigation of the
principles of language. After all my reading and observation for the
course of ten years I have been able to unlearn a considerable part of
what I learnt in early life, and at thirty years of age can with
confidence affirm that our modern grammars have done much more hurt than
good. The authors have labored to prove what is obviously absurd,
namely, that our language is not made right; and in pursuance of this
idea have tried to make it over again, and persuade the English to speak
by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own. Hence they have
rejected many phrases of pure English, and substituted those which are
neither English nor sense. Writers and grammarians have attempted for
centuries to introduce a subjunctive mode into English, yet without
effect; the language requires none distinct from the indicative; and
therefore a subjunctive form stands in books only as a singularity, and
people in practice pay no regard to it. The people are right, and a
critical investigation of the subject warrants me in saying that common
practice, even among the unlearned, is generally defensible on the
principles of analogy and the structure of the language, and that very
few of the alterations recommended by Lowth and his followers can be
vindicated on any better principle than some Latin rule or his own
private opinion."
Accordingly, besides publishing some dissertations on the subject, he
issued a new grammar in 1807, based this time on Horne Tooke's
Diversions of Purley, an author with whom Webster would naturally be in
sympathy. This grammar never had a firm hold of the public, and was
subsequently incorporated into the prefatory matter of his great
dictionary, where he says: "My researches into the structure of language
had convinced me that some of Lowth's principles are erroneous and that
my own grammar wanted material corrections. In consequence of this
conviction, believing it to be immoral to publish what appeared to be
false rules and principles, I determined to suppress my grammar, and
actually did so."
Here we have his frankness of character, his honesty, his force of will,
and the impulsiveness with which he took up attractive theories. Perhaps
the most comprehensive statement of his ruling principle is that he was
governed by usage, but did not sufficiently discriminate between usage
by educated and usage by uneducated people; he had, indeed, so violent a
prejudice against grammarians in general, and so much respect for
popular instinct, that it was a recommendation to him when a phrase was
condemned by the grammarians, while in common use by the people. For
example he says in a Letter to the Governors, Instructors, and Trustees
of the Universities and other Seminaries of Learning in the United
States, "According to the grammars, the pronoun _you_, being originally
plural, must always be followed by a plural verb, though referring to a
single person. This is not correct, for the moment the word is generally
used to denote an individual, it is to be considered as a pronoun in the
singular number, the following verb should be regulated by that
circumstance and considered as in the singular.... Indeed, in the
substantive verb, the word has taken the singular form of the verb, _you
was_, which practice is getting the better of old rules and probably
will be established." But old rules have considerable vitality, and the
general opinion still is that if an individual permits himself to be
represented by a plural pronoun he must accept all the grammatical
consequences. "I will even venture to assert," he continues in the same
letter, "that two thirds of all the corruptions in our language have
been introduced by _learned_ grammarians, who, from a species of
pedantry acquired in schools, and from a real ignorance of the original
principle of the English tongue, have been for ages attempting to
correct what they have supposed _vulgar errors_, but which are in fact
_established analogies_.... In this country it is desirable that
inquiries should be free, and opinions unshackled. North America is
destined to be the seat of a people more numerous probably than any
nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except
some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a
great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and corruptions by
the mere force of authority."
This appeal to the pride of the young nation is a curious instance of
the growing consciousness of Americanism which was more rampant in
Webster than in any of his contemporaries. The passages which I have
been quoting intimate the deference which Webster displayed toward the
people. He was one of the first to carry a spirit of democracy into
letters. Intense Federalist as he was, his Federalism agreed with a
stout anti-aristocratic spirit; and throughout his work one may detect a
confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as
Franklin's, and was used, in his enthusiasm, to determine questions in
language and literature never before brought to such a test.
Unquestionably a main source of Webster's strength and success lay in
this democratic instinct; it was not patriotism alone, it was the spirit
which hailed the new democracy, and in its very contempt of precedent
and historic authority disclosed its rude self-reliance.
This temper had a more favorable field for its exhibition in the third
part of "A Grammatical Institute" which bore the sub-title: "An American
Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking; calculated to improve the
Minds and refine the Taste of Youth, and also to instruct them in the
Geography, History, and Politics of the United States. To which are
prefixed Rules in Elocution, and Directions for expressing the Principal
Passions of the Mind." This laboriously emphatic title-page bears the
motto from Mirabeau: "Begin with the infant in his cradle; let the first
word he lisps be Washington." In strict accordance with this patriotic
sentiment, the compiler gives a series of lessons which would not be
inappropriate to any girl or boy who in infancy had performed the feat
of lisping the easy-going name which Mirabeau himself probably had some
difficulty in conquering. "In the choice of pieces," says Webster in his
preface, "I have been attentive to the political interests of America. I
consider it as a capital fault in all our schools that the books
generally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth; while
the writings that marked the Revolution, which are perhaps not inferior
to the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and which are calculated to
impress interesting truths upon young minds, lie neglected and
forgotten. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at
the commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble sentiments
of liberty and patriotism that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them
into the breasts of the rising generation." Accordingly, he makes
abundant room in his book for orations by Hancock, Warren, Livingston,
and Joel Barlow, and for poetry by Freneau, Dwight, Barlow, and
Livingston again, all kept in countenance by Cicero, Publius Scipio,
Shakespeare, and Pope, while a tribute is paid to "Mr. Andrus of Yale
College, since deceased," by the insertion of "A Dialogue written in the
year 1776." To plump from Joel Barlow at the North Church in Hartford,
July 4, 1787, to a portion of Cicero's oration against Verres, probably
produced no severe shock, since both orations were intended as exercises
in speaking, and the former by its structure was removed to about the
same chronological distance from the young speaker as the latter. It
would be a curious inquiry how far writers of historical addresses in
America have from the beginning been affected by the necessity which a
regard for ancient models laid upon them of fitting the facts of our
Revolutionary War to oratorical periods, and how far popular
conceptions of the beginning of our national life have been formed by
the "pieces" which young Americans have been called upon to speak. The
Roman was the most distinguished predecessor by name of this new
republic, and enthusiastic patriots went to it for literary furniture as
freely as their ancestors in New England applied to the Jewish
theocracy. In the contemporary ephemeral literature of the time there is
a faint survival of the older forms, but a more energetic reproduction
of Roman symbols, taken sometimes directly from Latin literature and
history, sometimes indirectly from the chill Augustan renaissance of the
English eighteenth-century literature. The interior manners of the two
periods are well contrasted in two sets of letters, the earlier passing
between John and Margaret Winthrop, the later between John and Abigail
Adams. The Scriptural allusions which crowd the Winthrop letters have
not wholly disappeared in the Adams letters, but they are more formally
introduced as fragmentary bits of wisdom, and appear side by side with
quotations from Pliny and Rollin's "Ancient History;" Mrs. Adams signs
herself Portia; the vessels which carry the letters are the Apollo, the
Juno, and the Minerva; and classical allusions constitute a good share
of such playfulness as may be found.
The judgment with which Webster made his reading selections largely from
American sources was not the result of a mere Anglo-phobia; it was the
product of an ardent, hopeful patriotism trained within narrow
provincial bounds. Webster was not old enough to have been much under
the impression of the English rule in America, and his days had been
spent in farming villages where the traditions were little affected by
foreign life, or in a college which jumped over intermediate centuries
to find models in Roman antiquity. His education, meaning by that the
cultivation of his powers by what were literary or circumstantial
influences, had made him quite exclusively an American and a republican;
when he began to give expression, therefore, to his mind, he was
unimpeded and unstimulated by anything outside of the horizon of his
frugal life; he was not so much opposed to foreign culture as he was
absolutely ignorant of it; and in his career we are called upon to
observe the growth of a mind as nearly native as was possible. If I am
not mistaken, that which was Webster's weakness as an individual man was
his strength as the pioneer of education in a new country.