The publication of "An American Dictionary" in 1828 was followed by increased activity on Dr. Webster's part. He was more than ever ambitious to secure a standard, especially in orthography, and he began the arrangement of his various text-books in a series which should constitute an imposing phalanx, each supporting its neighbor. The work of preparation, revision, and publication occupied the rest of his life. The quarto Dictionary in two volumes cost twenty dollars. He provided soon an abridgment in octavo, and a "Dictionary for Schools, the Counting-House, and for Families in Moderate Circumstances;" he was constantly revising his most lucrative book, the "Elementary Spelling-Book," and he issued new editions of his "History of the United States," his "Teacher," a supplement to the "Elementary," his "Improved Grammar," and he prepared a "Manual of Useful Studies." All of these books had friends and enemies, and one of the most energetic of the latter, Lyman Cobb, published "a Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of Books for Systematick Instruction in the English Language," which, in spite of some injustice and much quibbling, is a most searching and exhaustive commentary on Webster's weaknesses. The contest over Webster's Dictionary, however, did not assume great proportions until after the publication of Worcester's Dictionary, which afforded Webster's opponents a flag about which they could rally. The war of the dictionaries occurred after Webster's death, and it is not within the province of this sketch to enter upon that military campaign. 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, 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. The resolute old man, working at his lexicography to the last moment, was for them also the tender-hearted head of a family, coming out from his study to hear the music he loved so well, joining in the home life, making affectionate pilgrimages to the old homestead in West Hartford, and putting in a plea there for the preservation of the old fruit trees and vines which dated from his childhood. He was a sturdy, upright man, with the courtesy of an old Federalist, and his figure was a familiar one in the streets of New Haven. It was there that he died, May 28, 1843, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, surrounded by his family, and cheerful with the sense of a full life and of Christian trust and expectation.

Noah Webster's name abides, connected with the great work which he initiated, and the monument will keep his name imperishable. It never can be an uninteresting study to the people how the man, whose name is a household word, wrought and achieved; the solid expression of character, which I have tried to outline, is worthy of a fuller, more thorough treatment; and it is to be hoped that the sturdy life of more than three score years and ten, which he lived, with its dreams, its discoveries, its ventures, its toil, and its honest achievements may some day be told with all the minuteness which records, researches, and reminiscences will permit. Yet I do not believe the fullest account of Webster would disclose any important traits not discovered by the exhibition of such of his writings and labors as we have included in this survey. There was nothing concealed in his nature. His vanity made him open, and his strong self-reliance gave him a boldness of expression which makes it possible for any student to measure his aims.

The chief discovery yet to be made of Webster, if any is possible, lies in the direction of history. I do not suppose that if the entire correspondence of Webster with his contemporaries could be produced, we should find him any more potent as a public man than we have seen him to be; but a more thorough comprehension of the forces at work in the organization of national life may yet enable us to see with greater distinctness the degree of Webster's power and function. The last result of historical study is the determination of national genius, and for that time and the slow evolution of national character are requisite. I am sure that the dignity of Webster's position in our history is more intelligible to-day than it was in his own time. I am confident that the twentieth century will give him a juster meed than we are giving him to-day.

It was at once his fortune and his misfortune to pass his life contemporaneously with the birth and adolescence of a great nation, and to feel the passion of the hour. There is unquestionably a parochial sort of nationality which it is easy to satirize. No one could well set it out in stronger light than Webster himself in those passages in the preface to his Dictionary which I have already quoted. He is judiciously silent concerning the American poets of his time, being careful, even,—most unkindest cut!—not to commit himself to the support of Joel Barlow's heroic verse; but he produces a list of American prosaists, whom he places back to back with their English fellows. He has a proper sense of the importance of language to a nation, and appears to be perplexed by the implied question: If Englishmen and Americans speak the same language, how in the world are we to tell them apart and keep them apart? Then again, since there has been a revolution resulting in governmental independence, what stands in the way of a complete independence, so that the spick and span new nation may go to the language tailors and be dressed in a new suit of parts of speech? "Let us seize the present moment," he cries, "and establish a national language as well as a national government." Never was there such a chance, he thinks, for clearing away the rubbish which has accumulated for generations in our clumsy, inelegant language. Hand him the Bible which people have foolishly regarded as a great conservator of the English tongue, and he will give you a new edition "purified from the numerous errors." Knock off the useless appendages to words which serve only to muffle simple sounds. Innocent iconoclast, with his school-master ferrule!

It is worth our while to make serious answer to these serious propositions, since the true aspect of native literature may thus be disclosed. The Revolution, which so filled Webster's eyes, was unquestionably a great historic event by reason of its connection with the formal institution of a new nation; but the roots of our national life were not then planted. They run back to the first settlements and the first charters and agreements; nor is the genesis of the nation to be found there; sharp as are the beginnings of our history on this continent, no student could content himself with a conception of our national life which took into account only the events and conditions determined by the people and the soil of America. Even in actual relations between America and Europe there never has been a time when the Atlantic has not had an ebbing as well as a flowing tide, and the instinct which now sends us to the Old World on passionate pilgrimages is a constituent part of our national life, and not an unfilial sentiment. In the minds of Webster and many others, England was an unnatural parent, and the spirit of anger, together with an elation at success in the severing of governmental ties, made them impatient of even a spiritual connection. But the Revolution was an outward, visible sign of an organic growth which it accelerated, but did not produce; and the patriotic outcries of the generation were incoherent expressions of a profounder life which had been growing, scarcely heeded, until wakened by this event. The centripetal force of nationality was at work, and it is possible now, even from our near station, to discover the conjunction of outward circumstance and inward consciousness which marks nationality as an established fact. It was a weak conception of nationality which was bounded by Webster's definition; but his belief in his country and his energetic action were, in reality, constantly overpassing that conception. In spite of the disposition to regard a written constitution as the bottom fact, there was the real, substantial, organic nation, and that saved the paper nation from erasure,—a fate which easily overtakes South American republics. A nation which could immediately be placed in the world's museum, duly ticketed and catalogued, with its distinct manners, dress, language, and literature,—this was a conception which resulted logically from theories which held the nation itself to be the creation of popular will or historic accident; but a nation slowly struggling against untoward outward circumstance and inward dissension, collecting by degrees its constituent members, forming and reforming, plunging with rude strength down dangerous ways, but nevertheless growing into integral unity,—this has been the historical result of the living forces which were immanent in the country when the nation was formally instituted.

Now there never has been a time from Webster's day to this when Americans have not believed and asserted that nationality consisted mainly in independence, and waxed impatient not merely of foreign control and influence, but even of hereditary influence: the temper which calls for American characteristics in art and literature is often scarcely less hostile to the past of American history than to the present of European civilization. It is a restless, uneasy spirit, goaded by self-consciousness. It finds in nature an aid and abettor; it grows angry at the disproportionate place which the Cephissus, the Arno, the Seine, the Rhine, and the Thames hold on the map of the world's passion. We are all acquainted with the typical American who added to his name in the hotel book on the shores of Lake Como, "What pygmy puddles these are to the inland seas of tremendous and eternal America!" But these are coarser, more palpable signs of that uneasy consciousness which frets at a continued dependence on European culture.

There is no doubt that Webster was right when he set himself the task of Americanizing the English language by a recourse to the Spelling-Book. He succeeded very largely in determining the form of words; but he did more than this, while he failed in the ambitious and preposterous task which he set himself. He did more; by his shrewdness and his ready perception of the popular need he made elementary education possible at once, and furnished the American people with a key which moved easily in the lock; he failed where he sought the most, because language is not a toy or a patent machine, which can be broken, thrown aside at will, and replaced with a better tool, ready-made from the lexicographer's shop. He had no conception of the enormous weight of the English language and literature, when he undertook to shovel it out of the path of American civilization. The stars in their courses fought against him. It is so still. We cannot dispense with European culture, because we refuse to separate ourselves from the mighty past, which has settled there in forms of human life unrepresented among us. We cannot step out of the world's current, though it looks sluggish beside our rushing stream, because there is a spiritual demand in us which cries louder than the thin voice of a self-conscious national life. This demand is profoundly at one with the deeper, holier sense of national being which does not strut upon the world's stage. The humility of a great nation is in its reverence for its own past, and, since that is incomplete, in its admiration for whatever is noble and worthy in other nations. It is out of this reverence and humility and this self-respect that great works in literature and art grow, and not out of the overweening sensitiveness which makes one's nationality but a petty jealousy of other people.

It is possible for us thus to discriminate between a nationality which is a mere posture and that which is a plain expression of positive organic life. When we measure the force of the latter we are compelled to a finer analysis, and its illustrations are to be sought in subtler manifestations. Webster well exemplifies, by the very rudeness of his mind, phases of Americanism which may be traced in more delicate lines elsewhere. There can be no doubt that self-reliance, which was both the cause and the effect of local self-government long practiced, has been a powerful factor in American life; that an indifference to the past has often been only the obverse of an elastic hope, a consciousness of destiny; that a fearlessness and a spirit of adventure have been invited by the large promises held out by nature; that an expansiveness of mind, and an alertness and facility in intellectual device, have been encouraged by the flexile condition of American society. All things have seemed possible to the ardent American, and each has secretly said to himself:—

"I ... had resolved to be
The maker of my destiny."