Like Webster, Fowle had a sharp grasp of the realities of nineteenth-century American English. He saw the weaknesses of contemporary grammar teaching and his ideas for reform were enlightened and sensible. If they had been incorporated into a conventional grammar book, they might have taken root. Fowle spoiled his book’s chance of classroom adoption—and his chance to influence the way Americans thought about English—by turning a grammar text into a treatise on etymology. As with Webster’s Philosophical and Practical Grammar, his reasonable suggestions were swamped in a sea of linguistic proselytizing. Arguments for dropping Latin case names or accepting It is me lose much of their punch when they’re accompanied by extended arguments that from is really a noun.
* * *
Other alternative grammar books appeared during the 1820s. Their authors all share the same general point of view as Fowle. They all criticize mainstream grammar books for purveying Latin-based nonsense. They also emphasize that standard English should be defined by the normal way that most people talk. They all make reasonable arguments for teaching grammar in a new way—one that starts from an appreciation of how English is really constructed and how Americans actually use it. Unfortunately, none of the authors can resist embellishing their main topic with speculative theories about word origins. Predictably, these eccentric books made no more headway with teachers or the general public than Fowle’s had.
One book that received some attention was William Cardell’s Elements of English Grammar, Deduced from Science and Practice, Adapted to the Capacity of Learners. Published in 1826, Elements of English Grammar focuses on the supposedly scientific aspects of Horne Tooke’s theories. Cardell taught French and English in New York and also wrote boys’ adventure stories. Several years earlier, he had been active in trying unsuccessfully to found an American Academy of Language. As he wrote in a letter to the elderly Thomas Jefferson, the academy hoped to “form and maintain … an English standard of writing and speaking, correct, fixed, and uniform, throughout our extensive territory.”17 (The former president approved of the idea, but declined to participate.)
Cardell wrote Elements of English Grammar in the hope of providing a more rational description of the language. He deplored the sloppiness of standard grammar texts. He asks, “Who, in teaching arithmetic, would say ‘nine times nine makes a hundred;’ and then offer as a reason for this misstatement that a hundred is a round number and easier to remember than the real product.”18 In his opinion, the broad generalizations that most grammar books make about parts of speech and word relationships are no less misleading.
Cardell attributes the misinformation that infects other grammar textbooks to their authors’ lack of scientific training. He says, “Those who … devoted their lives to this study were in too great a degree mere linguists, and not persons of accurate scientific pursuits.” He also argues that to get at the essence of English, grammarians need to return to the roots of language—“the strong, crude models of early expression.” They must ignore artificially imposed rules and classifications and try to discover what English was like in its more primitive state.19
Cardell’s book is more conventional than Fowle’s. His definitions of the parts of speech are simple and straightforward (nouns are names of things, verbs signify actions), and his brief section on syntax consists of an uncontroversial list of the usual rules. Cardell also includes parsing exercises. Hints of Horne Tooke begin to surface as Cardell reviews each part of speech. For instance, in a footnote to his definition of nouns he tells students (incorrectly), “The word thing is derived from the old Saxon thingian, to think.”20 Eventually, he bogs down in the same etymological swamp that trapped Fowle.
Another writer who tried to inject scientific rigor into grammar study was John Lewis. Lewis, a Kentuckian, tutored young men preparing for college. He also wrote poetry and a popular novel of the western frontier titled Young Kate. Lewis added interest to his grammar book by presenting it as a series of conversations between a schoolboy named George and George’s papa. He may have been inspired by the conversations in The Diversions of Purley, but livening up scholarly topics with invented dialogue was not that unusual in the nineteenth century.
Lewis’s 1825 Analytical Outlines of the English Language opens with George expressing an interest in learning something about grammar. Papa tells him that the best way to start is to “become, in some measure, acquainted with that which is in your own head.”21
Rather than recommending a grammar book for George to memorize, Papa encourages his son to formulate a grammar of English by thinking about what he already intuitively knows. Eventually George realizes that, contrary to what he has previously heard—“that we must learn [grammar] in order to write and speak correctly”—grammar arises out of speech itself. His father confirms that grammar is nothing but “the collected methods used in speaking and writing.” The rules of grammar should conform to speech, says Papa, not regulate it.22 That is, grammatical standards must be compatible with the speech patterns that people have already internalized.
Lewis’s description of grammar is surprisingly modern—not that different from how linguists talk about it now—but Lewis soon abandons this intriguing direction. Instead, he concentrates on examining the parts of speech. At this point, he goes down the same tortuous path as Fowle, Cardell, and the other reforming grammarians.
“By tracing conjunctions, prepositions, articles, &c. to the original word,” explains Papa as he introduces the subject to George, “Mr. John Horne Tooke has clearly proved that they are nouns or verbs.” After further talk, he and his son improve on Horne Tooke’s theory. They decide that even verbs were originally derived from nouns. “The noun is the material of which all the words of all languages have been formed,” Papa summarizes. “The different parts of speech … we must therefore consider as subdivisions of one class.”23 By this time, Lewis and his two protagonists have strayed rather far from the practical aspects of grammar.
The comment of one reviewer—“We fear Mr. Lewis is rather too fervent a worshipper of John Horne Tooke”—could have applied to any of the authors of alternative grammar books. Not all the reviews were negative. Cardell in particular came in for praise. “His work will stand,” predicts a reviewer for the New York Literary Gazette, “for it is based on good sense and sound philosophy.” Even Lewis’s reviewer concedes that the book is “a work of some novelty, and evidently proceeds from a thinking, rather than an imitative mind.”24
Unfortunately, the authors’ preoccupation with reclassifying the parts of speech overshadowed their more reasonable ideas and allowed most reviewers to dismiss them as cranks. A common complaint is that their books are impractical. “For all schemes of amendment,” declares one of Fowle’s reviewers, “there should be but one test. They must be sound, and they must be practicable.” In his opinion, Fowle’s book falls far short. More harshly, a Cardell reviewer, while admitting that there is “room for improvement” in current methods of teaching grammar, says, “it is not for … wild theorists to make it.”25
As for Lewis’s dialogues, they are “couched in phrase too elaborate for the pupil,” says his reviewer. Besides, they “raise an expectation of entertainment too high to be gratified” by a detailed analysis of grammar.26 By modern standards at least, they are unquestionably heavy going, even for an adult. It’s hard to believe that the schoolchildren Lewis was writing for would have felt anything but bewilderment.
Most reviewers treated the authors’ claims about parts of speech as obvious absurdities. One of Fowle’s reviewers declares that he sees no advantage in changing their names if the current ones still work. The main purpose of grammar, he says, is “general utility and not philosophical or abstract propriety.” The same reviewer also attacks Horne Tooke, saying, “Besides being imperfectly acquainted with the Northern dialects, he was … essentially unqualified to pursue his researches in etymology.… Bear in mind that many of his derivations are fanciful.”27
The reviewer for
North American Review begins his critique of Fowle’s book by announcing sarcastically, “The object of this manual is to rescue parents and teachers … from the whole tribe of grammars, which, since the days of Lowth and Murray, have so fearfully accumulated upon them.” He then presents Fowle’s main arguments in their silliest possible form. He ends the review by congratulating Fowle on “the great work of restoring our language to its primitive simplicity.”28
After these blistering criticisms, Fowle felt compelled to write a second volume defending his work. In the introduction to volume two of The True English Grammar, published in 1829, he explains how his teaching experiences led him to compile “such an English grammar as the best authorities and the structure of our language authorized.” This book has brought upon him “so much ridicule that its principles must be defended or abandoned.”29 The rest of this short volume is an impassioned defense of his ideas.
He continues to be infuriated by most grammar books’ “servile deference to Latin.” This misplaced reverence, he says, has led to the bizarre practice of using quotations from great authors as examples of incorrect speech. “There was a time before grammars were invented to clip the wings of fancy and shackle the feet of genius,” Fowle cries, “when it was considered more important to express a thought clearly and forcibly than, as now, prettily and grammatically.” Shakespeare couldn’t have written with such brilliance if he had been forced to follow the rules in Murray.30
Fowle is stung by one reviewer’s assumption that he copied his ideas from Webster. Although he admires Webster, he is unfamiliar with the contents of A Philosophical and Practical Grammar. “I endeavored to find it,” he says, “but it was not for sale in the city.” Sneers at Horne Tooke also touch him on the raw. “It has been fashionable for pert reviewers and grammarians to revile the great man to whom we are indebted, at least for showing the right path,” he says, before mounting a sweeping defense of the man he admires. He reminds readers that Horne Tooke had been an outspoken advocate of the American revolutionary cause. Therefore, Americans have an additional reason to be grateful to him.31
Finally, Fowle denies charges that his book poses problems for children trying to learn grammar. “I defy the most captious to produce a single sentence in my book which authorizes any departure from good usage,” he challenges.32 He seems unaware that his lack of usage guidance, orthodox or otherwise, is one of the biggest problems with his book. Both teachers and learners preferred a grammar text that laid out concise rules in familiar terms. That meant continuing to patronize Lindley Murray and other grammarians who stayed with the tried-and-true formulas.
* * *
Nothing illustrates the power of established linguistic traditions in the United States better than the fate of Noah Webster’s famous dictionary. When Fowle, Cardell, and Lewis were publishing their theories of grammar in the 1820s, Webster’s voice was uncharacteristically missing from the debate. He had not abandoned his grammatical principles or his devotion to American English. He was simply engrossed in a new phase of his life’s work.
Almost as soon as his 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language was published, Webster began exploring the possibility of producing a much more comprehensive volume. His goal was to provide a complete picture of American English—more accurate, consistent, and scholarly than anything that had come before. He would spend most of the next two decades devoted to this staggeringly ambitious project.
Webster received little encouragement for his new enterprise. His friend Oliver Wolcott, responding to a letter in which Webster outlined his ideas, says frankly that he is doubtful about the dictionary’s feasibility. Getting a publisher won’t be easy. Wolcott has mentioned it to a number of publishers and booksellers, and they are leery of such an unprecedented project. “It is very generally objected,” he explains, “that the size of your dictionary, & the manner in which it is to be published, & the sum required, are not ascertained.”
Webster had hoped to fund his research and writing by collecting subscriptions—advance payments from those pledged to buy a copy of the book. At that time subscriptions were a common way for writers to support themselves, but Wolcott questions whether the money will be forthcoming in this case. He writes, “My experience of the world has satisfied me that it is in vain to reason with the greatest part of mankind, if they have to pay ten dollars in consequence of being convinced. If as I presume a considerable sum is wanted, I cannot encourage you to expect success.”33 Wolcott was right. Only a handful of Webster’s friends and well-wishers sent money in advance. Their contributions, even when combined with the small but regular profits from his book sales, would not be enough to feed him, his wife, and his seven children while he worked.
Webster was determined to find a way. He believed the project was important enough to be worth the risk. Besides, it might well be a greater success than most of his friends thought. As he points out in a letter to Joel Barlow, nearly everyone except Barlow discouraged him from attempting a spelling book in 1783. Yet more than 200,000 copies were now selling annually. He tells Barlow that he intends nothing less than to lay the foundation of “a more correct practice of writing and speaking.” Sounding the old theme, he adds, “It is time for us to begin to think for ourselves. Great Britain is probably in her wane.”34
As one way to save money, the Websters moved from New Haven to the small farming town of Amherst, Massachusetts. In this rural area they were able to live more frugally while Webster continued to work doggedly on his dictionary project. He spent most of his days shut up in his second-floor study. He worked standing up at a two-foot-wide table shaped like a hollow circle. (He considered sitting at a desk a lazy habit.) To research a word, he began at one side of the table and walked around along its edge, consulting one volume after another from the piled stacks of dictionaries and other reference books. At fifty-four, Webster was still upright and slender, and sturdy enough to spend all day on his feet.
The work progressed slowly for several reasons. One was the sheer amount of research involved. Another major factor was Webster’s decision to detour into the treacherous territory of language origins. Although he still admired Horne Tooke, he now thought that many of Horne Tooke’s word histories were inaccurate. That left him frustrated in his aim to provide more complete etymologies than other dictionaries offered. As he explains in his dictionary’s preface, “I found myself embarrassed at every step for want of a knowledge of the origin of words which … other authors do not afford the means of obtaining.”35 After completing the letters A and B, he stopped work on the dictionary proper to focus on this side project.
A new worldview was partly responsible for Webster’s conclusion that Horne Tooke was mistaken. In 1808 Webster and most of his family joined the thousands of Americans caught up in the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. During most of his life, Webster had not been deeply religious. Now he dedicated himself to strict Calvinist principles.
His newfound religious faith ignited a fresh interest in the events of the Old Testament. These gave him a starting point for his word origins research. Beginning with the story of Noah and his descendants, Webster traced the spread of languages around the world. The result was A Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages. In the Synopsis Webster compares a variety of European and Middle Eastern languages and makes etymological connections between words that he believes are related. About half the size of the eventual dictionary, the book took nearly ten years to complete. However, it would turn out to have little practical value.
The Synopsis suffers from the same shortcomings as the Diversions of Purley and other word histories of the period. Webster connected words based on free association and superficial resemblances rather than verifiable linguistic facts. His knowledge of most of the languages involved was sketchy. Also, his reliance on the Bible as his main source led him astray. Because of his beliefs about how humans repopulated the world after the Flood, he assumed that English and other European
languages had to be related to ancient Middle Eastern tongues like Hebrew and Aramaic. Modern linguists have demonstrated that Middle Eastern and European languages belong in two different groups.
In the end Webster did not have much to show for his ten years of work. He had hoped to include the Synopsis as the dictionary’s third volume, but had to abandon the idea. Printing it would have entailed extensive use of non-Western typefaces, making the cost prohibitive. He then tried collecting enough subscriptions to bring out the volume as a separate book, but didn’t find any takers. He eventually settled for incorporating some of the material into the dictionary entries, along with writing an essay on language origins for the dictionary’s preface.
Webster’s work on his dictionary project was also slow because he took time out for political activities. Although he no longer edited a Federalist newspaper, he remained politically engaged. In 1814 he lent his support and writing skills to the Hartford Convention, a gathering of Federalists opposed to “Mr. Madison’s War” of 1812 against the English. He also served in the Connecticut and Massachusetts legislatures and ran unsuccessfully more than once for the House of Representatives.
He was involved in his local community as well. He served as a justice of the peace, and helped found Amherst Academy, a private school that later became Amherst College. He also started work on a revision of the King James Bible. Concerned with grammar as always, he tidied up its archaic usages. He also replaced obsolete words and substituted euphemisms for potentially offensive words and phrases. (For instance, he avoided womb by using indirect phrases like made fruitful or made barren.) Webster’s Bible, sometimes known as the Common Version, would be published in 1833.
In 1817, as he was wrapping up the Synopsis, Webster at last achieved the financial security that had eluded him during most of his life. After many years of selling the rights to his speller piecemeal—and seeing printers reap the largest share of the profits—he sold the exclusive right to publish the American Spelling Book to the Hartford firm of Hudson & Co. In exchange, he was to receive $3,000 a year for fourteen years (the life of the copyright), beginning in 1818. Short of cash as usual, Webster later renegotiated this agreement. In 1817 he received an advance of $3,000 and the next year a $20,000 lump sum payment. Although it was only about half of what he would have made under the original contract, $23,000 was enough to relieve him of money worries. He returned to his work on the dictionary with renewed zest.
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