It is not necessary to enlarge further, to show the motives which the people of America have to turn their thoughts early to this subject; they will naturally occur to congress in a much greater detail than I have time to hint at. I would therefore submit to the consideration of congress the expediency and policy of erecting by their authority a society under the name of “the American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language.” The authority of congress is necessary to give such a society reputation, influence, and authority through all the States and with other nations. The number of members of which it will consist, the manner of appointing those members, whether each State shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall appoint them, whether after the first appointment the society itself shall fill up vacancies, these and other questions will easily be determined by congress.
It will be necessary that the society should have a library consisting of a complete collection of all writings concerning languages of every sort, ancient and modern. They must have some officers and some other expenses which will make some small funds indispensably necessary. Upon a recommendation from congress, there is no doubt but the legislature of every State in the confederation would readily pass a law making such a society a body politic, enable it to sue and be sued, and to hold an estate, real or personal, of a limited value in that State.1
Despite this ardent advocacy of an academy “for refining, improving and ascertaining the English language” in America, Adams does not seem to have joined the Philological Society that was organized in New York in 1788, with substantially the same objects. But Noah Webster, the lexicographer, was a member of it, and indeed the boss of it. It got under way on March 17 and apparently blew up early in 1789, after he had moved to Boston. Its only official acts of any importance, so far as the surviving records show, were to recommend his immortal spelling-book “to the use of schools in the United States, as an accurate, well-digested system of principles and rules,” and to take part in a “grand procession” in New York in July, “to celebrate the adoption of the Constitution by ten States.” Webster was told off to prepare a record of the society’s participation in the latter, and wrote the following:
The Philological Society
The secretary bearing a scroll, containing the principles of a Federal language.
Vice-president and librarian, the latter carrying Mr. Horne Tooke’s treatise on language, as a mark of respect for the book which contains a new discovery, and as a mark of respect for the author, whose zeal for the American cause, during the late war, subjected him to a prosecution.1
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Esq., the president of the society,2 with a sash of blue and white ribbons. The standard-bearer, Mr. William Dunlap,3 with the arms of the society, viz. — argent three tongues, gules, in chief, emblematical of language, the improvement of which is the object of the institution. Chevron, or, indicating firmness and support; an eye, emblematical of discernment, over a pyramid or rude mountain, sculptured with Gothic, Hebrew and Greek letters. The Gothic on the light side, indicating the obvious origin of the American language from the Gothic. The Hebrew and Greek upon the reverse or shade of the monument, expressing the remoteness and obscurity of the connection between these languages and the modern. The crest, a cluster of cohering magnets, attracted by a key in the center, emblematical of union among the society in acquiring language, the key of knowledge, and clinging to their native tongue in preference to a foreign one. The shield, ornamented with a branch of the oak, from which is used the gall used in making ink, and a sprig of flax, from which paper is made, supported on the dexter side by Cadmus, in a robe of Tyrian purple, bearing in his right hand leaves of the rush or flag, papyrus, marked with Phoenician characters, representing the introduction of letters into Greece and the origin of writing. On the sinister side, by Hermes, or Taaut, the inventor of letters and god of eloquence, grasping his caduceus or wand. Motto — Concedat laurea linguae, expressive of the superiority of civil over military honors. The flag, embellished with the Genius of America, crowned with a wreath of 13 plumes, ten of them starred, representing the ten States which have ratified the Constitution. Her right hand pointing to the Philological Society, and in her left a standard with a pedant, inscribed with the word, CONSTITUTION. The members of the society in order, clothed in black.1
It is easy here to discern the hand of Webster, who had a deft talent for what is now known as public relations counselling or publicity engineering. The Philological Society was not the first organization of its sort to be projected in America, nor was the “American Academy for refining, improving and ascertaining the English language” suggested by Adams in his letter to the president of Congress in 1780, nor the American Society of Language proposed by An American (as I have noted, probably also Adams) in 1774. So early as 1721 Hugh Jones, professor of mathematics at William and Mary College, had adumbrated something of the sort in “An Accidence to the English Tongue,” the first English grammar produced in America.2 But nothing came of this, and it was not until the end of the century that any active steps were taken toward getting such a project under way.3 They resulted, in 1806, in the introduction of a bill in Congress incorporating a National Academy or National Institution, one of the purposes of which was to nurse and police the language, but that bill collided with a rising tenderness about States’ rights, and soon died in committee, though it was supported by John Adams’s son, John Quincy, then a Senator from Massachusetts. The projectors, however, did not despair, and in 1820 they organized an American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres in New York, with John Quincy Adams as president. Its objects were thus set forth in the first article of its constitution:
To collect, interchange and diffuse literary intelligence; to promote the purity and uniformity of the English language; to invite a correspondence with distinguished scholars in other countries speaking this language in common with ourselves; to cultivate throughout our extensive territory a friendly intercourse among those who feel an interest in the progress of American literature, and, as far as may depend on well meant endeavors, to aid the general cause of learning in the United States.1
There was but little indication here of a design to set up American standards. As a matter of fact, the academy was quite willing to accept English authority, and when it appointed a committee on Americanisms that committee was instructed “to collect throughout the United States a list of words and phrases, whether acknowledged corruptions or words of doubtful authority, which are charged upon us as bad English, with a view to take the best practical course for promoting the purity and uniformity of our language.” Its corresponding secretary and chief propagandist, William S. Cardell,2 made this plain in a letter to Thomas B. Robertson, Governor of Louisiana, on October 12, 1821:
Without any dogmatical exercise of authority, if such words as lengthy, to tote and to approbate3 should be published as doubtful or bad they would generally fall into disuse.
A formidable party of big-wigs supported the academy, including James Madison, former President of the United States; John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (who contributed $100 to its funds); Joseph Story and Brockholst Livingston, Associate Justices; Charles Carroll of Carrollton (who also contributed $100); Dr. John Stearns, founder of the State Medical Society of New York; John Trumbull, the last survivor of the Hartford Wits; John Jay, Chancellor James Kent, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, William B. Astor, William Wirt, General Winfield Scott and various governors, senators, ambassadors, judges, congressmen and college presidents, but there were also some opponents, and one of them was Webster, though he consented grudgingly to being elected a corresponding member.1 “Such an institution,” he wrote to Cardell, apparently in 1820, “would be of little use until the American public should have a dictionary which should be received as a standard work.” This standard work, of course, was already in progress in Webster’s studio, but it was not to be published until 1828. Be
fore it came out he launched a plan of his own for a sort of joint standing committee of American and English scholars to consider “such points of difference in the practise of the two countries as it is desirable to adjust,” but when he appointed Dr. Samuel Lee, professor of Arabic at Cambridge, to take charge of it in England the dons of the two universities refused to have anything to do with it. Others who opposed the American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres were Edward Everett, then editor of the North American Review, and Thomas Jefferson. Read suggests that “sectional jealousy, Boston against New York,” may have influenced Everett. Jefferson was offered the honorary presidency of the Academy, but refused it. When he was then elected an honorary member he wrote to Cardell from Monticello, January 27, 1821:
There are so many differences between us and England, of soil, climate, culture, productions, laws, religion and government, that we must be left far behind the march of circumstances, were we to hold ourselves rigorously to their standard. If, like the French Academicians, it were proposed to fix our language, it would be fortunate that the step were not taken in the days of our Saxon ancestors, whose vocabulary would illy express the science of this day. Judicious neology can alone give strength and copiousness to language, and enable it to be the vehicle of new ideas.
“Clearly,” says Read, “Jefferson was not sympathetic to the aims of an academy.” But though this one soon petered out, efforts to revive it in one form or another continued for years, and those efforts culminated, in 1884, in the launching of plans for what is now the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with the National Institute of Arts and Letters as its farm or antechamber.2
Among the members of the Philological Society of 1788 was Samuel Mitchill, a famous character of the era. This Mitchill, whose name was erroneously spelled Mitchell in my earlier editions, was a scientifico in general practise, and in his later years was called the Nestor of American science. Born on Long Island in 1764, he took his degree in medicine at Edinburgh, and on his return to the United States became professor of chemistry, natural history and philosophy at Columbia. In 1796 he undertook a geological tour of New York State that got him a lot of notice, and a year later he and two associates set up the Medical Repository, the first American medical journal. He joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons when it was organized in 1807, and was at different times professor of natural history, of botany and of materia medica. He was an enlightened physician for his time, but succumbed to some of the crazes that characterized it. Fielding H. Garrison says,1 for example, that he was one of those who, following Lavoisier’s discovery of the physiological function of oxygen, “were carried away by their imaginations to the extent of attributing diseases either to lack or excess of oxygen, or to some fine-spun modification of this theory.” Mitchill’s interests and activities were by no means confined to the physical sciences. He also took a hand in politics, and after service in the New York Legislature and the national House of Representatives, was elected a United States Senator in 1804. He was likewise engrossed by language problems and by pedagogy, and one of his projects was the Americanization of the classical nursery rhymes, which he regarded as too monarchical in tendency for the children of a free democracy. Among other changes he advocated the following revision of “Sing a Song of Sixpence”:
And when the pie was opened
The birds they were songless;
Now, wasn’t that a funny dish
To set before the Congress!2
Of all the early American savants to interest themselves in the language of the country the one destined to be the most influential was Webster. A penetrating and amusing account of him is to be found in “Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America,” by Harry R. Warfel.3 There was nothing of the traditional pedagogue about him — no sign of caution, policy, mousiness. He launched his numerous reforms and innovations with great boldness, and defended them in a forthright and often raucous manner. Frequently traveling in the interest of his spelling-book,1 he got involved in controversies in many places, and was belabored violently by a long line of opponents. Moreover, he took a hand in political, medical, economic and theological as well as philological disputes, and made a convenient target every time bricks were flying. Not many men have ever been more sure of themselves. It was almost impossible for him to imagine himself in error, and most of his disquisitions were far more pontifical than argumentative in tone. He had no respect for dignity or authority, and challenged the highest along with the lowest. Once he even went to the length of upbraiding the sacrosanct Washington — for proposing to send to Scotland for a tutor for the Custis children. When it came to whooping up his spelling-book he was completely shameless, and did not hesitate to demand encomiums from Washington, Jefferson and Franklin. Franklin responded with a somewhat equivocal letter and Washington with a frankly evasive one, but the franker Jefferson, though inclined to support the Websterian reforms, did not like Webster, and not only refused to help him but once denounced him as “a mere pedagogue, of very limited understanding and very strong prejudices and party passion.”2 Jeremy Belknap, founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society,3 sneered at him as “No-ur Webster eskwier junier, critick and coxcomb general of the United States”; Samuel Campbell, one of his many publishers, called him “a pedantic grammarian, full of vanity and ostentation,” and William Cobbett, while in Philadelphia in 1797, publishing Porcupine’s Gazette, denounced him as a “spiteful viper,” a “prostitute wretch,” a “demagogue coxcomb,” a “toad in the service of sans-culottism,” a “great fool and barefaced liar,” and a “rancorous villain.”4 Webster responded to these assaults in like terms. “His snarling wit,” says Warfel, “lacked the salt of Franklin’s good humor and of Francis Hopkinson’s rollicking fun. He had taken the nation for his scholars, and he used old-fashioned browbeating tactics.”1
But the fact remains that he was often right, and that not a few of the strange doctrines he preached so violently, at least in the field of language, gradually won acceptance. He came upon the scene at a time when there was a rising, if still inarticulate, rebellion against the effort to police English from above, and he took a leading hand in shaping and directing it. “The prevailing view of language in the Eighteenth Century,” say Sterling Andrus Leonard in “The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800,”2 “was that English could and must be subjected to a process of classical regularizing. Where actual usage was observed and recorded — even when the theory was promulgated that usage is supreme — this was, in general, done only to reform and denounce the actual idiom.” Webster’s natural prejudices, I believe, ran the same way, for he was not only a pedagogue but also a Calvinist, and not only a Calvinist but also a foe of democracy.3 Indeed, all his attacks upon authority were no more than arguments against the other fellow’s and in favor of his own. But he was far too shrewd to believe, like Johnson and most of the other English lexicographers and grammarians, that language could really be brought under the yoke. He had observed in his native New England that it was a living organism with a way of life of its own — that its process of evolution was but little determined by purely rational considerations. Thus, when he came to write his own books, he knew that the task before him was predominantly one of reporting rather than of philosophizing, of understanding before admonition. He saw clearly that English was undergoing marked changes in America, both in vocabulary and in pronunciation, and, though he might protest now and then, he was in general willing to accept them. The pronunciations he adopted were those of the educated class in New England, and he offered no resistance to American neologisms in vocabulary, provided only they were not what his Puritan soul regarded as “low.” When, after the publication of his trial-balloon Dictionary of 1806, he was taken to task for admitting into it such apparent barbarisms of the New World as customable and decedent,1 he defended them in a letter to Thomas Dawes, dated New Haven, August 5, 1809. “Such local terms exist,” he wrote, “and will exist, in spite of lexicog
raphers or critics. Is this my fault? And if local terms exist, why not explain them? Must they be left unexplained because they are local? This very circumstance renders their insertion in a dictionary the more necessary, for, as the faculty of Yale College2 have said in approbation of this part of my work, how are such words to be understood without the aid of a dictionary?” And as in vocabulary, so in pronunciation. Great Britain, he wrote in the opening essay of his “Dissertations on the English Language,”3 “is at too great a distance to be our model, and to instruct us in the principles of our own tongue.… Within a century and a half North America will be peopled with a hundred millions of men, all speaking the same language.4 … Compare this prospect, which is not visionary, with the state of the English language in Europe, almost confined to an island and to a few millions of people; then let reason and reputation decide how far America should be dependent on a transatlantic nation for her standard and improvements in language.”5 “The differences in the language of the two countries,” he added in 1800,6 “will continue to multiply, and render it necessary that we should have dictionaries of the American language.” His standard of pronunciation, says Warfel,7 “was ‘general custom,’8 or, to use the more recent phrase, ‘standard usage.’ In this choice of current speech, rather than the university, dictionary or stage, as his source of correctness, he anticipated by nearly a century and a half the innovations of the National Council of Teachers of English.” “Common practise, even among the unlearned,” declared Webster in the preface to his “Dissertations,” “is generally defensible on the principles of analogy and the structure of the language.1 … The most difficult task now to be performed by the advocates of pure English is to restrain the influence of men learned in Greek and Latin but ignorant of their own tongue.”2
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