Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition: Study in English Usage and Lexicography 9783110805949, 9789027924285

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JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curat

C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica,

196

DICTIONARIES AND THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION A Study in English Usage and Lexicography by RONALD A. WELLS

1973

MOUTON THE H A G U E · PARIS

© Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague.

This book is for Elaine

PREFACE

Almost since its beginning, the English dictionary has been linked culturally with attitudes which have been fundamentally opposed to linguistic change. Although authoritarian linguistic attitudes have not been particularly characteristic of lexicographers, especially in the last hundred years, many others have continued to view the dictionary as an instrument to retard or check natural change in language, whether phonological, morphological, semantic, or grammatical. This book examines the tradition which has associated conservative or authoritarian attitudes with dictionaries of English, and which has perpetuated the fiction that the dictionary establishes the standard of usage for the language. Although his "Plan of a Dictionary" might seem to imply otherwise, the notion of the dictionary as linguistic authority for the standard of usage probably did not spring full grown from the head of Samuel Johnson. "One great end of this undertaking", he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, "is to fix the English language."1 After seven years of "harmless drudgery", however, Johnson was forced to admit that his dream of stemming the intumescent tide of linguistic change merely "indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience could justify".2 Yet the myth of the authority of the dictionary has persisted, in spite of our understanding that change in language is normal. Indeed, change is the very elan vital of language: when a language stops changing, it is no longer capable of expressing life; it is dead. If it were possible for the lexicographer to "secure [the language] from corruption and decay", this would, to turn Johnson's phrase to new purpose, truly "embalm his language".3 Ever since Richard Chenevix Trench pointed to "some deficiencies in our English dictionaries",4 lexicographers have been somewhat more modest in their cultural aspirations than were Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. But the cultur1 Samuel Johnson, "The Plan of A Dictionary of the English Language" (1747), in Johnson: Prose and Poetry, ed. Mona Wilson (Cambridge, Mass, 1957), 127. 2 Samuel Johnson, "Preface", A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), 3. 3 Johnson, "Preface", 3. 4 Richard Chenevix Trench, "On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries", Transactions of the Philological Society (1857), 3-8.

8

PREFACE

ally ingrained notion of the dictionary as the standard of usage, and the lexicographer as the guardian of that standard, has continued with astonishing persistency. Even scholars of language often have assumed that exclusion from a dictionary of a word form, or sense, or pronunciation, somehow, magically perhaps, slows the "rate of acceptance" of the new into the language, or conversely, conserves the waning sounds and shapes of the old. In this study, I submit, passim, that there is little evidence to support this view. As speech is prior (temporally and logically) to writing, usage is prior to dictionaries. Lexicographers record usage; they do not invent it. Furthermore, it is not the lexicographer's role to prescribe as to good usage. As Clarence L. Barnhart has said, "A good dictionary is a guide to usage much as a good map tells you the nature of the terrain over which you may want to travel. It is not the function of the mapmaker to move rivers or rearrange mountains... ." s Several years ago, Alf Sommerfelt said to the International Congress of Linguists assembled in Oslo, "Our time is a time of dictionaries".« And the sound and fury which accompanied the publication of a recent major dictionary demonstrated that in this time, like others before it, the lexicographer and the dictionary were still the victims of authoritarian attitudes towards English usage and lexicography. The debate over Webster's Third New International Dictionary is still going on, incredibly enough, more than ten years after its publication; although the discussion seems lately to have turned from the merits or demerits of that particular wordbook to the larger question of the social function of the dictionary. In a sense, that larger question is also the subject of this study: although there is no new answer, it is my hope that the secondary questions asked along the way will place the primary question in clearer perspective. To that purpose, this study concludes by analyzing the techniques for measuring and describing usage which are available to the lexicographer. Of the various studies of English dictionaries, most center on the evolution of the historical principle in lexicography. Since in these works the authoritarian view of the dictionary is normally dismissed out of hand, the tenacity with which this view has survived has generally been obscured. The exposition by Starnes and Noyes is by far the most comprehensive and detailed treatment of early English word-books.7 Murray, Mathews, and Hulbert each give chronological surveys;8 and both Wheatley and Long offer only a minimum of commentary on the dictionaries 5

Clarence L. Barnhart, "General Introduction", American College Dictionary (New York, 1953), p. ix. β Alf Sommerfelt, "Discussion", Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists (Oslo, 1958), 98. 7 D e Witt T. Starnes and Gertrude E. Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 1604-1755 (Chapel Hill, 1946). 8 James A. H. Murray, The Evolution of English Lexicography (London, 1900); Mitford M. Mathews, A Survey of English Dictionaries (New York, 1933); James R. Hulbert, Dictionaries: British and American (London, 1955).

PREFACE

9

which they notice.· None of these is primarily concerned with the lexicographer's handling of social dialects and usage problems. Of studies of Johnson, Sledd and Kolb's treatment is of particular value, not only for its biography of Johnson's book, but also for its insights into more general lexicographical problems;10 and Harold B. Allen's unpublished dissertation devotes a full chapter to Johnson's commentary on usage.11 The studies in American lexicography by Steger and Joseph Harold Friend are also historically focused.12 Steger's treatment is sketchy; Friend gives much attention to the lexicographer's method, but ends his study at the Webster-Worcester 'dictionary war'. Briefly, then, this study comprises the following parts. Chapter One attempts to give a broad overview of the origins and development of English lexicographical method, through Johnson and Webster, to its culmination in the historical principle and the Oxford English Dictionary. Chapters Two and Three discuss the authoritarian tradition in English, as it has developed and continued on both sides of the Atlantic. Chapter Four gives brief but concentrated attention to the new linguistic authoritarianism precipitated by the publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Chapter Five then focuses specifically on lexicography and English usage, and outlines lexicographical devices which may be used to describe usage problems within the brief compass of a general dictionary. I have drawn extensively on the work of other scholars, and have attempted to acknowledge my debt in the following pages. I have hoped thereby to synthesize much existing lexicographical commentary, and thus provide a new perspective on the authoritarian tradition and the English dictionary. In addition to the many scholars on whose work this study is based, I have several personal debts to acknowledge. First, I owe much to Kenneth G. Wilson, of the University of Connecticut, who originally suggested the direction of this study, and (if I may compress and alter slightly Johnson's phrase) who taught me "a scholar's reverence . . . for the genius of our tongue". I am grateful to Professors Milton R. Stern and Thomas Roberts, also of the University of Connecticut, for their aid and advice in the earlier phases of this study; to Dean Paul F. Foye of the United States Coast Guard Academy, for his continuing support of my work; to my colleague, Professor Nathan L. Marvin, for his comments on portions of the text; and to Anna R. Cardinali, for her help in preparing the manuscript for publication. Finally, to my wife, Elaine Oliva Wells, and my daughters, Aileen, Christine, and Diana, I am indebted for their constant and unselfish understanding and encouragement. • Henry B. Wheatley, "Chronological Notices of the Dictionaries of the English Language", Transactions of the Philological Society (1865), 218-93; Percy Waldron Long, "English Dictionaries Before Webster", Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America IV (1909), 25-43. 10 James H. Sledd and Gwin Kolb, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (Chicago, 1955). 11 Harold B. Allen, "Samuel Johnson and the Authoritarian Principle in Linguistic Criticism" (University of Michigan diss., 1940). 12 Stewart A. Steger, American Dictionaries (Baltimore, 1913); Joseph Harold Friend, The Development of American Lexicography, 1798-1864 (The Hague, 1967).

CONTENTS

Preface 1.

2.

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

13

1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5.

13 16 18 20 25

.

.

.

.

.

.

Toward an academy of the English language The need for an English dictionary The dictionary as authority: Samuel Johnson The reception of Johnson's Dictionary

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 3.8. 4.

Early word lists The first English dictionaries: the 'hard words' tradition . The comprehensive English dictionary Inductive method The historical principle

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 3.

7

31

31 38 40 43 .

.

.

.

Proposals for an American academy Authoritarian attitudes and Anglophilia Noah Webster's linguistic patriotism Spelling reform Webster's influence on American spelling Webster's American Dictionary The 'war of the dictionaries' Linguistic conservatism: renewed efforts for an American academy

48

48 51 55 57 62 63 67 69

THE SECOND DICTIONARY WAR: WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY

74

4.1. 4.2. 4.3.

74 79 82

The new authoritarianism Three reviews Rebuttal

12 5.

CONTENTS LEXICOGRAPHY AND ENGLISH USAGE

5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9.

Usage information in the early dictionaries The authority of the dictionary Usage orientation in modern dictionaries The situational dimension The situational and modal dimensions confused: the colloquial label The usage note The verbal illustration The synonymy Conclusions

Bibliography

87

87 92 95 100 103 109 113 116 117 121

1 THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

1.1.

EARLY WORD LISTS

The origins of English dictionaries may be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period of the seventh and eighth centuries, to a time, in the words of Sir James A. H. Murray, "not long posterior to the introduction of Christianity in the south of England at the end of the sixth century". 1 Priests and scholars, glossing Latin manuscripts, compiled lists of difficult words to help readers unfamiliar with Latin. Interlinear glosses, collected in separate manuscripts, were often combined with one another. As the resultant glossaries grew longer, the need for ready access became apparent, and the word lists were eventually recopied by scribes in an alphabetical order based on the initial letter of the word ('first-letter order'). It is worth noting that the principle of alphabetization, or 'dictionary order', is quite arbitrary. As Murray observes, There i s . . . no other connexion between a dictionary and alphabetical order, than that of a balance of convenience. Experience has shown that though an alphabetical order makes the matter of a dictionary very disjointed, scattering the terminology of a particular art, science, or subject all over the book, and even when related words come together, often putting the unimportant derivative in front of the important primitive word, it is yet that by which a w o r d . . . can be found, with least trouble and exercise of thought. 2

One of the early glossaria exists in three manuscripts, the Epinal, the Erfurt, and the Corpus glossaries.3 By about 725, when the Corpus glossary was compiled, the alphabetic principle has been advanced to second-letter order; and in one tenthcentury glossary, entries were alphabetized as far as the third letter.4 From the very beginning, wordbooks were established as an ordering instrument for language. More directly antecedent to English dictionaries than the Latin glosses, and 1

Sir James A. H. Murray, The Murray, Evolution of English 3 See The Oldest English Texts, 1885), 1-109. 4 Murray, Evolution of English 8

Evolution of English Lexicography (London, 1900), 13. Lexicography, 19. ed. Henry Sweet, Early English Text Society Reprint (London, Lexicography, 11-12.

14

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

more significant for the development of English lexicography,® are the Latin-English and English-Latin dictionaries of the early Renaissance period. The earliest EnglishLatin lexicons are the Promptorium parvulorum, or 'children's store-room' (c. 1440), listing some twelve thousand entries, and the Catholicon Anglicum (c. 1483) with about eight thousand.· In the Promptorium, alphabetized entries under each letter are divided into two groups, with nouns and other forms listed under "nomina" and verbs under "verba". In the Catholicon the entries are arranged in a single alphabetized list, and abundant synonyms are supplied; the Catholicon also attempts to distinguish the meaning and usage of terms which are regarded as synonymous.7 In the earliest printed Latin-English lexicon, the [H\ Ortus Vocabulorum (1500), which comprises about twenty-seven thousand entries,8 quotations of Latin hexameters are supplied to illustrate the meanings and usage of some words.9 Each of these compilations acknowledges the major sources from which it is derived, with a view towards accruing to itself the prestige of well known scholastic authorities.10 The resurgent interest in humanistic learning in the sixteenth century gave impetus to the production of a number of English-Latin and Latin-English dictionaries, the chief purpose of which was to assist students.11 The most important of the sixteenth-century English-Latin lexicons are Richard Huloet's Abcedarium Anglico Latinum (1552), John Withals' Shorte Dictionarie for Younge Begynners (1553), John Baret's Alvearie (1573), and John Rider's Bibliotheca Scholastica (1589). The wordlists within the Elyot-Cooper tradition dominate the LatinEnglish dictionaries: The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Elyot (1538) and the Bibliotheca Eliotae (1545), Thomas Cooper's 1548 revision of the Bibliotheca, Cooper's Thesaurus linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565), and Thomas Thomas' Dictionarium linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587).12 As Murray points out, the phrase 5

Starnes and Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 2. As Starnes and Noyes note (242), the term dictionary is not found in the title of any of the bilingual wordlists before 1500. The first lexicon to use the term is the Dictionary of Syr Thomas Elyot (1538). 8 See The Promptorium Parvulorum, The First English-Latin Dictionary, ed. A. L. Mayhew, Early English Text Society Reprint (London, 1906); and Catholicon Anglicum, an EnglishLatin Wordbook, ed. Sidney J. H. Heritage, Early English Text Society Reprint (London, 1881). 7 See DeWitt Τ. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries (Austin, 1954), 22-23. 8 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 29. Starnes notes (6) that the name Medulla Grammatice, generally used to refer to the manuscript versions of the earliest known (c. 1460) Latin-English dictionary (which was never printed) is sometimes confusingly used as an alternate title for the Promptorium parvulorum. 8 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 36. 10 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 341. 11 Mitford M. Mathews, A Survey of English Dictionaries (London, 1933), 14. 13 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, passim. James Sledd has remarked that "Renaissance dictionaries stand in such complex interrelations that they cannot properly be used without fairly extensive source-study" ("Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum and the Eliot-Cooper Tradition", Studies in Philology LI [1954], 147). Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum, for example, is claimed by Marckwardt to be "an early example of the citation dictionary". (See Albert H. Marckwardt, ed., Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum [Ann Arbor, 1952], 7.) For de-

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

15

"dictionary order" was still meaningless in the first half of the sixteenth century, 18 since three different ordering principles were in use. Withals' Shorte Dictionarie, for example, arranges entries topically, so that associated terms ("names of things in the Aether or skie, the xii Signes, the vii Planets, Tymes, Seasons", etc.) 1 4 are found at the same place, with their meanings presented in a loosely connected discourse. 15 Withals states in his Prologue, I have resorted to the most famous and ancient Authors, out of the whiche, as out of cleare fountaines, I have drawen as diligently as I coulde the proper names of thinges conteyned under one kynde, and disposed them in suche ordre, that a very childe beyng able to reade, may with little labour perfitely imprinte them in memory. 18 Elyot's Dictionary, following Calepine's Latin Dictionarium ( 1 5 0 2 ) , orders its entries on an etymological principle, with derivatives following root words. 1 7 Cooper's Thesaurus modifies this plan by supplying alphabetical cross-references. 1 8 However, the strict alphabetical order, persisting from the Promptorium through Thomas' Dictionarium, finally prevailed, and is the general practice in modern dictionaries today. 19

tailed source studies, see also three articles by Marckwardt: "An Unnoted Source of English Dialect Vocabulary", Journal of English and Germanic Philology XLVI (1947), 177-82; "Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum and Somner's Dictionarium", Philological Quarterly XXVI (1947), 345-51; and "The Sources of Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum", Studies in Philology XLV (1948), 21-36. The following articles by DeWitt Τ. Starnes are antecedent to and incorporated in Starnes's Renaissance Dictionaries: "Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus: A Chapter in Renaissance Lexicography", University of Texas Studies in English XXVII (1949), 15-48; "An Elizabethair Dictionarie for Yonge Beginners", University of Texas Studies in English XXIX (1950), 51-76; "Thomas Cooper and the Bibliotheca Eliotae", University of Texas Studies in English XXX (1951), 40-60; and "Richard Huloet's Abcedarium: A Study in EnglishLatin Lexicography", Studies in Philology XLVIII (1951), 717-37. A further illuminating study by DeWitt Τ. Starnes, Robert Estienne's Influence on Lexicography (Austin, 1963), establishes Estienne's Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum as a basic source of the 1545 Bibliotheca Eliotae and Cooper's 1548 revision of that work, as well as his own Thesaurae linguae Romanae et Britannicae, Baret's Alvearie, and others. 13 Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 19. 14 Quoted ibid. 15 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 169. 19 John Withals, "Prologue", A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (London, 1553). Quoted in Henry B. Wheatley, "Chronological Notices of the Dictionaries of the English Language", Transactions of the Philological Society (1865), 221. 17 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 54. For a discussion of the etymological principle of organization in a dictionary, see Danby P. Fry, "On Some English Dictionaries, especially one proposed by the late Alfred Augustus Fry", Transactions of the Philological Society (1859), 257-72. 18 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 103. 19 For an exposition of the organizational problems raised by rigid adherence to this principle, see "The Problem of Alphabetical Order" in Eric Partridge, The Gentle Art of Lexicography, as Pursued and Experienced by an Addict (London, 1963), 38-62; and Hans H. Meier, "Lexicography as Applied Linguistics", English Studies L (1969), 141-51.

16 1.2.

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

THE FIRST ENGLISH DICTIONARIES: THE "HARD WORDS" TRADITIONS

The appearance in the sixteenth century of bilingual and polyglot dictionaries combining a modern language such as French or Italian with English20 complemented the influence of the English-Latin and Latin-English wordbooks in establishing a lexicographical tradition in England. Although a monolingual dictionary of English had not yet appeared, rudimentary techniques of word description, defining by giving several synonymic equivalents, had been developed by the seventeenth century. When the need for such a work became apparent, it was not a difficult transition from the bilingual to the monolingual lexicon. In spite of Percy W. Long's statement that the earlier bilingual dictionaries are "in no wise historically related" to English dictionaries,21 and James Hulbert's insistence that "dictionaries which explained English words by English equivalents could not derive directly from the bilingual ones",22 there is ample evidence that scores of definitions were borrowed from Latin-English dictionaries by the earliest English lexicographers, Cawdrey, Bullokar, Cockeram, Blount, and others.23 The need for a list of English words and meanings was generated by two main factors working in combination. The secularization of learning, the growth of public schools, and the invention of printing had, for one thing, resulted in a greatly increased reading public. In addition, the very rapid expansion of the English vocabulary, with terms imported from both ancient and modern foreign languages, presented that reading public with new and unfamiliar terms. Increased commerce, exploration, travel, and numerous translations of foreign writings led to many new borrowings; more important, the freedom of coinage, and the conscious literary efforts to enrich the English lexicon that gave birth to "inkhorn terms",24 sharply pointed up the necessity of a work explaining the new accessions to the vocabulary. Thus the first English dictionaries were dictionaries of "hard words"; their purpose was to explicate the meanings of the 80

John Palsgrave's Esclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse (1530); John Florio's A Worlde of Wördes (1598) (Italian-English); and Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 1611), are representative bilingual lexicons; John Kinshieu's Ductor in Linguas... The Guide into the Tongues (London, 1617), is the most important polyglot dictionary of the period. See DeWitt Τ. Starnes, "Bilingual Dictionaries of Shakespeare's Day", PMLA LII (1937), 1005-18; and for specialized source studies, Vera E. Smalley, The Sources of A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, by Randle Cotgrave (1611) (Baltimore, 1948); and Ν. E. Osselton, "The Sources of the First Dutch and English Dictionary", Modern Language Review LXIV (1969), 355-62. 21 Percy Waldron Long, "English Dictionaries Before Webster", Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America IV (1909), 25. 22 James Hulbert, Dictionaries British and American (London, 1955), 16. 23 Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries, 348-49. 24 It was not, however, believed that the function of the lexicographer was to make such conscious attempts at enrichment. See James Sledd, "A Footnote on the Inkhorn Controversy", University of Texas Studies in English, XXVIII (1949), 49-56. Sledd states (55): "Careful sampling of the English columns in the dictionaries of Elyot and Cooper reveals no evidence that the lexicographers had an undue predilection for inkhorn terms or a real aversion to them. Rather they seem to be in the mainstream of Elizabethan English "

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

17

many new terms in the language. A dictionary in the seventeenth century was, in Edward Phillips' phrase, "a book wherein hard words and names are mentioned and unfolded".25 The first English dictionary is Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall (1604), followed by John Bullokar's An English Expositor (1616), Henry Cockeram's The English Dictionarie (1623), and Thomas Blount's Glossographia (1656). All of these are in the "hard words" tradition, as may be seen from an examination of their title pages. Cawdrey's Table Alphabetical, for example, is inscribed: A Table Alphabetical, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French &c. With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons. Whereby they may the more easilie and better understand many hard English wordes, which they shall heare or read in Scriptures, Sermons, or elsewhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselves.28 Drawing on Edmund Coote's The English Scholemaster (1596) and the Dictionarium linguae Latinae et anglicanae of Thomas Thomas (1588), Cawdrey lists nearly three thousand difficult words with brief definitions.27 He instructs his reader in the use of the book: If thou be desirous (gentle Reader) rightly and readily to vnderstand, and to profit by this Table . . . then thou must learne the Alphabet, to wit, the order of the letters as they stand, perfectly without booke, and where euery Letter standeth, as (b) neere the beginning, (n) about the middest, and (t) toward the end... ,28 Cawdrey, however, was opposed to the great influx of "inkhorn terms"; his chief concern was with "hard usual words".29 Cawdrey's immediate successors stressed the more eccentric and ephemeral words. A "hard words" tradition, which influenced English dictionaries for the next century, was thus established for English lexicography. Since readers became accustomed to finding the meanings of hard words in these wordbooks, the Anglo-American tradition of lexicolatry may well begin at this point. Bullokar's English Expositor, "teaching the interpretation of the hardest words used in our Language, with sundry explications, descriptions, and discourses",80 nearly doubles the wordlist of Cawdrey. Bullokar speaks of the great store of strange words, our speech doth borrow, not only from the Latine, and Greeke (and some from the ancient Hebrew), but also from forraine vulgar languages 25

Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words (London, 1658), n.p. Robert Cawdrey, A Table Alphabeticall (London, 1604), title page. 27 Starnes and Noyes, 13-19. 28 Cawdrey, n.p. 2 » Gertrude E. Noyes, "The First English Dictionary, Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall", Modern Language Notes LVIII (1943), 600. See also Robert A. Peters, "Robert Cawdrey and the First English Dictionary", Journal of English Linguistics II (1968), 29-42. 80 John Bullokar, An English Expositor (London, 1616), n.p. 28

18

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

round about us; beside sundry old words now growne out of u s e . . . . I open the signification of such words, to the capacitie of the ignorant, whereby they may conceive and use them as well as those which bestowed long study in the languages, for considering it is familiar among best writers to usurpe strange words (and sometimes necessary by reason our speech is not sufficiently furnished with apt terms to express all meanings) I suppose withall their desire is that they should be understood; which I . . . have endeavoured by this B o o k e . . . . 3 1 The first wordbook to bear the title The English Dictionarie, however, is that of Henry Cockeram, published in 1623. As Cockeram states on the title page, The English Dictionarie is " a collection of the choicest words contained in the Table Alphabeticall and English Expositor, and of some thousand of words never published by any heretofore". 3 2 The dictionary is divided into three parts. The first lists "hard" words with their definitions in simple language, while the second explains ordinary, or "vulgar", words by more elegant equivalents. The third section, by which Cockeram probably hoped to increase the appeal of the dictionary, ss gives names of mythological heroes, 34 and various flora and fauna. Cockeram explains in his "Premonition from the Author to the Reader": . . . The method is plaine and easie, being alphabeticall, by which the capacity of the meanest may soone be inlightened. The first Booke hath the choisest words themselves now in use, therewith our language is inriched and become so copious, to which words the common sense is annexed. The second Booke containes the vulgar words, which whensoever any desirous of a more curious explanation by a more refined and elegant speech shall looke into, he shall there receive the exact and ample word to expresse the same: Wherein by the way let me pray thee to observe that I have also inserted (as occasion served) even the mocke-wordes which are ridiculously used in our language, that those who desire a generality of knowledge may not bee ignorant of the sense, even of the fustian termes, used by too many who study rather to bee heard speake, than to understand themselves. The laste Booke is a recitall of severall persons, Gods and Goddesses, Giants and Devils, Monsters and Serpents, Birds and Beasts, Rivers, Fishes, Herbs, Stones, Trees, and the like, to the intent that the diligent learner may not pretend the defect of any helpe which may informe his discourse or practice... . 3 5

1.3.

THE COMPREHENSIVE ENGLISH DICTIONARY

F o r the next one hundred years, English dictionaries did not change significantly. Books like Blount's Glossographia (1656), Phillips' The New World of English John Bullokar, "To the Courteous Reader", ibid. Henry Cockeram, The English Dictionarie of 1623, ed. Chauncey Brewster Tinker (New York, 1930), title page. For Cockeram's debt to Bullokar, see Gertrude E. Noyes, "Some Interrelations of English Dictionaries of the Seventeenth Century", PMLA LIV (1939), 990-1006; and Starnes and Noyes, 26-36. 33 Starnes and Noyes, 28. 34 For an exposition of this feature, see DeWitt T. Starnes and Ernest W. Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill, 1955). 35 Henry Cockeram, "A Premonition from the Author to the Reader", An English Dictionarie, pp. xv-xvi. 31

32

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

19

Words (1658), and Elisha Coles's An English Dictionary (1676), perpetuated the "hard words" tradition. At the turn of the seventeenth century, however, English lexicography took a new departure with the publication of A New English Dictionary (1702), by "J. K." 3e The title page reveals a new emphasis on comprehensiveness and inclusiveness, encompassing the common word: A New English Dictionary: Or, a Compleat collection of the most proper and significant words, commonly used in the language; with a short and clear Exposition of Difficult Words and Terms of Art. The whole digested into alphabetical order... .S7 In the preface, "J. K." complains that existing dictionaries, particularly Coles's An English Dictionary, do not mirror the English language as it is, but rather list hundreds of words "which are scarce ever us'd by any ancient or modern Writer, . . . so that a plain Country-man, in looking for a common English W o r d , . . . must needs lose the sight of i t . . . ,"38 Observing that "very few of the genuine and common significant Words of the English Tongue" are cited in existing dictionaries, the author states that his work "is intended only to explain such English Words as are genuine, and used by Persons of clear Judgment and good Style"; A New English Dictionary, therefore, is "a Collection of all the most proper and significant English Words, that are now commonly us'd either in Speech, or in the familiar way of Writing Letters, &c.; omitting at the same time, such as are obsolete, barbarous, foreign or peculiar... ."3ft Nearly twenty years later, Nathanael Bailey built on the foundation that Kersey had laid to produce what has been termed "the supreme popular dictionary of the 18th century",40 An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721). As his title suggests, Bailey gives the origins of words a new emphasis. His etymological purposes lead him away from the "hard words" tradition to an attempt to include all the words in the language.41 Excerpts from Bailey's title page are instructive: 38

"J. K." is identified by Starnes and Noyes (69) as John Kersey, author of the Dictionarium A nglo-Britannicum (1708) and reviser of Phillips' New World of Words in 1706.Wheatley (240) refuses to make this identification, since Kersey nowhere acknowledges the work, and since a second edition was published in 1713 with the initials, after the 1708 Dictionarium which uses Kersey's name. Long (30), on the other hand, takes Kersey's authorship for granted. In a note on "The Authorship of Ά N e w English Dictionary' (1702)", Notes and Queries XV, V(N.S.), (December, 1968), 444-45, Christian Heddesheimer attempts to reinforce the identification of "J. K." with Kersey on the basis of stylistic parallels of the Preface to A New English Dictionary with the prefaces of Kersey's revision to Phillips, and his own Dictionarium AngloBritannicum. 37 "J. K.", A New English Dictionary (London, 1702). Quoted in Wheatley, 242. Murray (Evolution of English Lexicography, 34-35) does not mention this work, giving credit for the first dictionary which aims to include all English words to Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary (1721). 38 "J. K.", "Preface", A New English Dictionary. Quoted in Starnes and Noyes, 71. M "J. K " , "Preface". Quoted ibid., 72. 40 Long, 31. 41 Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 35.

20

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

An Universal Etymological English Dictionary: comprehending the Derivations of the Generality of Words in the English Tongue, either Antient or Modern, from the Antient British, Saxon, Danish, N o r m a n and Modern French, Teutonic, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew Languages, each in their proper Characters. And also a Brief and clear Explication of all difficult Words . . . and Terms of Art relating to Anatomy, Botany, P h y s i c k . . . . Together with A Large Collection and Explication of Words and Phrases us'd in our Antient Statutes, Charters, Writs, Old Records, and Processes at Law; and the Etymology and Interpretation of the Proper Names of Men, Women, and Remarkable Places in Great Britain: Also the Dialects of our Different Counties. Containing many Thousand Words more t h a n . . . any English Dictionary before 42 Extant

Starnes and Noyes estimate Bailey's vocabulary at 40,000 words,43 a far cry from the 3,000 listed in Cawdrey's Table Alphabetical1. Bailey's emphasis on comprehensiveness is carried through in his Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), a "more Compleat Universal Etymological English Dictionary than any Extant".44 This work, listing some 48,000 items,45 served as the basis for Samuel Johnson's dictionary. In Benjamin Martin's Lingua Britannica Rejormata (1749), however, while comprehensiveness is still considered a virtue, the wordlist is reduced to about 24,500 entries.46 Martin anticipates Johnson and subsequent lexicographers in attempting to include all words in reputable usage, and by omitting entries which result in a "Redundancy of useless and obsolete Words".47 This critical principle culminates in the work of Samuel Johnson and the idea of a standard dictionary, which dominates English lexicography for the next century.

1.4.

INDUCTIVE METHOD

The method of the early lexicographers in compiling their wordlists was primarily, in Percy Long's phrase, "a process of accretion rather than evolution".48 The syn42

Nathanael Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (London, 1721), title page. Quoted in Wheatley, 244. 43 Starnes and Noyes, 100. 44 Nathanael Bailey, Dictionarium Britannicum (London, 1730), title page. Quoted in Wheatley, 245. 15 Starnes and Noyes, 118. 46 Starnes and Noyes, 154. 47 Benjamin Martin, "Preface", Lingua Britannica Rejormata. 48 Long, 32. 49 Starnes and Noyes, 50 ff. Phillips, John Milton's nephew, appropriated hundreds of Blount's definitions, and then, in order to conceal his indebtedness, attempted to discredit Blount. Blount complained in his A World of Errors Discovered in the New World of Words, or General English Dictionary ... (London, 1673), that Phillips had pilfered even his errors: "Thus it fared with my Glossographia Twelve Months had not passed, but there appeared in Print this New World of W o r d s . . . extracted wholly out of mine, and taking in its first Edition even a great part of my Preface; onely some words were added and others altered, to make it pass as the Authors legitimate offspring "

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

21

thesis of interlinear glosses and wordlists, and their alphabetization, provided a continually growing foundation for new compilations. As the various source studies indicate, lexicographers have traditionally borrowed quite freely from preceding dictionaries, sometimes plagiarizing with a free hand, as in the case of Blount's Glossographia and Phillips' New World of Words*9 More often, existing dictionaries were consulted and synthesized with other sources, such as spelling books and technical glossaries. By the eighteenth century, when "dictionary making is in the air",50 a lexicographer was able to muster an impressive array of sources. Bailey's 1721 Universal Etymological English Dictionary, for example, while heavily indebted to Kersey's 1708 Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, draws extensively upon Stephen Skinner's Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671), the Kersey revision of Phillips, Coles's English Dictionary, John Ray's Collection of English Words Not Generally Used (1674), and others.51 Nathanael Bailey's 1730 folio Dictionarium Britannicum follows in this line of English dictionaries. Although Bailey states in the Preface to the second (1736) edition that he has "with great Application endeavored to inrich it with all the Words that I could find in the Reading of a very large Number of Authors . . .",52 much of his word list derives in fact from his 1721 Universal Etymological English Dictionary.5S And if Bailey did add to the word lists the results of his reading, he did not think to record by means of illustrative quotation the contextual uses of those words. The eighteenth century, however, was literally an "age of dictionaries", as Sledd and Kolb have pointed out; 54 and the encyclopedic and lexicographical tendencies of the time received their fullest expression in the Dictionary of Samuel Johnson. With Johnson's work, the inductive principle becomes firmly established in English lexicographic tradition. To the glosses, the compilations, and the hard word lists of his predecessors, Johnson added a new empiricism, a wide ranging program of reading in diverse sources. By recording from his reading particular instances of usage, Johnson could then proceed by induction to a general definition of meaning. "To COLLECT the WORDS of our language", he says, was a task of greater difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, however, has been either skilful or lucky; for I have much augmented the vocabulary. 65

50 Mary Segar, "Dictionary Making in the Early Eighteenth Century", Review of English Studies VII (1931), 212. 51 See Starnes and Noyes, 102-103. 52 Nathanael Bailey, "Preface", Dictionarium Britannicum, n.p. 5S Starnes and Noyes, 120. 54 James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (Chicago, 1955), 19. 55 Samuel Johnson, "Preface", A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), 3,

22

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

Johnson also saw that merely to copy the work of other lexicographers carried with it an implicit danger: words which had rarely been used, or not readily accepted into the language as, for example, certain of the "inkhorn" innovations) continued to appear in the dictionaries.58 While acknowledging his predecessors, he makes the point: Many words yet stand supported only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips, or the contracted Diet, for Dictionaries subjoined; of these I am not always certain that they are read in any book but the works of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, because I had never read them; and many I have inserted, because they may perhaps exist, though they have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet considered as resting only upon the credit of former dictionaries. Others, which I considered as useful, or know to be proper, though I could not at present support them by authorities, I have suffered to stand upon my own attestation, claiming the same privilege with my predecessors of being sometimes credited without proof. 57

The folio of Bailey supplied a structural framework, to which Johnson added material gleaned from his investigations. By reading, underlining, and annotating passages he wished excerpted, and passing these on to apprentice copyists, he collected his corpus of materials. Sir John Hawkins' account is well known: J o h n s o n . . . had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous w o r k . . . taken a handsome house in Gough Square, and fitted up a room in it with desks and other accommodations for amanuenses, who, to the number of five or six, he kept constantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of Bailey's dictionary in folio he made the repository of the several articles, and these he collected by incessant reading the best authors in our language, in the practice whereof, his method was to score with a black-lead pencil the word by him selected, and give them over to his assistants to insert in their places. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet, some of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities.58

In this manner, by prodigious labor, Johnson was able in seven years to collect citations and authorities, which, combined with (and judged by) his own great knowledge of words, produced in 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language. The process of reading, annotating, and excerpting particular examples of usage, and from them inducing lexical meaning, anticipates the methods of modern lexicography. Johnson was conscious that he was exploring new frontiers. "Having therefore no assistance but from general grammar", he wrote in his Preface, "I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced to method... ." se The significance of 56 E. L. McAdam, Jr. and George Milne, "Introduction", Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection (New York, 1963), p. viii. 57 Johnson, "Preface", 3. 58 Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. Bertram H. Davis (New York, 1961), 77. 59 Johnson, "Preface", 3.

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23

Johnson's contribution is suggested by the fact that his method has not been substantially changed; indeed, Johnson's method has been a paradigm for all lexicographers since. Johnson's techniques for defining a word, and his inclusion of quotations from authorities, impress his personal stamp on the development of English lexicography. Η. B. Wheatley's summary, although requiring qualification, is useful: I. It was the first English dictionary that could in any way be considered as a standard, all its predecessors being mere lists of words in comparison. For a century at least literary men had been sighing for some standard, and Johnson did what Dryden, Waller, Pope, Swift, and others had only talked about. II. In this dictionary the meanings of words were, for the first time, fully illustrated by well-selected authorities. III. The definitions are full, clear, and above all praise for their happy illustration of the meaning of words. These can never be superseded, and the instances in which Johnson's successors have been able to improve upon his work in this respect are singularly few. That he had no assistance from his predecessors in this most important part of a lexicographer's work will be seen by a casual reference to the earlier dictionaries.60 While Wheatley's first point is indisputable, Sledd and Kolb have shown that the second and third must be seen in clearer historical perspective. The use of illustrative quotations, for example, appears in no English dictionary before Johnson's; but such may be found in numerous foreign language wordbooks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as that of the Academia della Crusca, which Johnson unquestionably knew. Similarly, precedents for Johnson's division and numbering of senses in the definition may be found in the Latin dictionary of Ainsworth, Abel Boyer's English-French, French-English dictionary, and in Benjamin Martin's Lingua Britannica Reformata of 1749."1 The history of English lexicography in the next hundred years is, essentially, a history of the Johnsonian tradition. The idea of the dictionary as the standard for the language, the idea of the dictionary as supreme linguistic authority, influenced the production, the advertising, and the reception of a long line of wordbooks.62 Johnson's Dictionary went through a series of editions; and there were frequent attempts at compiling additional wordlists to supplement that of Johnson.63 In Η. B. Wheatley, "The Story of Johnson's Dictionary", Antiquary XI (1885), 11-12; quoted in Sledd and Kolb, 41. 81 See Sledd and Kolb, 40-44. • 2 For detailed discussion of the influence of Johnson's Dictionary, see Sledd and Kolb, 134206, passim. ,s The history of the first seven editions, with Johnson's corrections and revisions, is discussed by Sledd and Kolb, pp. 105-33. Johnson died in 1784, by which time five folio editions had been printed. The sixth and seventh, in quarto, were published in 1785-1786. The tenth, unabridged, edition was printed in 1810; and the fourteenth (octavo), in 1815. In addition, several supplements were also compiled in this period, for varying reasons: e.g., the Reverend Jonathan Boucher's A Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: or, a Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1807); George Mason's A Supplement to Johnson's English Dictionary (New York, 1803); John Seager's A Supplement to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (London, 1819); and Richard Paul Jodrell's Philology on the English Language (1820). See Sledd and Kolb, 151-54.

24

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

1818, the Reverend Henry John Todd compiled the first major revision of Johnson, extending the wordlist (by drawing freely on the supplements of Boucher and Mason), and correcting and adding a number of quotations. The phonological aspect of lexicography, which in Johnson was limited in the entry to the use of a single accent, received fuller attention in several subsequent works. William Kenrick, for example, distinguished two levels of stress in his New Dictionary of the English Language (1773); in other respects, however, he followed Johnson closely. With the publication of Thomas Sheridan's A General Dictionary of the English Language (1780), Robert Nares' Elements of Orthoepy (1784), and John Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), the problem of incorporating pronunciation into the dictionary received copious attention. The dictionaries of competitors (chief of which in the eighteenth century was the Scott revision of Bailey's New Universal Etymological Dictionary of 1755) 84 paid Johnson the compliment of imitation, while yet claiming superiority over his work. Implicitly, it was clear that Johnson had established the standard against which all dictionaries must be measured. In the United States, the dictionaries of Noah Webster also fall within the Johnsonian tradition. Webster recognized Johnson's greatness, and fully appreciated the significance of his achievement. His attitude is expressed in a letter to David Ramsay in 1807: Johnson's writings had, in Philology, the effect which Newton's discoveries had in Mathematics, to interrupt for a time the progress of this branch of learning; for when a man has pushed his researches so far beyond his cotemporaries, that all men despair of proceeding beyond him, they will naturally consider his principles and decisions as the limit of perfection on that particular subject, and repose their opinions on his authority, without examining into their validity. 95

But Webster believed that he could improve greatly on Johnson's work, and could advert to his own linguistic nationalism as good and sufficient reason: "The question", he writes to Jedidiah Morse, " . . . is whether an American citizen shall be permitted to correct and improve English books or whether we are bound down to receive whatever the English give us".M Webster's answer to that question, of course, was the publication of the 1806 Compendious Dictionary, and the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. His method of compiling materials for those dictionaries did not differ essentially from that of Johnson; he read widely, collected excerpts, and compared previous dictionaries and other reference

•4 For an illuminating study of the interrelationships and debts of the 1755 Scott-Bailey and Johnson's Dictionary, see Philip B. Gove, "Notes on Serialization and Competitive Publishing", Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers V (1936-1939), 305-22. See also Sledd and Kolb, 147-49; and Starnes and Noyes, 183-84. « Noah Webster, "To David Ramsay" (October, 1807), in Harry R. Warfei, ed., Letters of Noah Webster (New York, 1953), 284. V> Noah Webster, "To Jedidia Morse" (July 30, 1806), in Letters, 269,

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

25

works. Mrs. Ford's description, reminiscent of Hawkins' account of Johnson, details the extent of Webster's research. Webster set up a large circular t a b l e . . . about two feet wide, built in the f o r m of a hollow circle. Dictionaries and grammars of all obtainable languages were laid in successive order upon its surface. Webster would take the word under investigation, and standing at the right end of the lexicographer's table, look it u p in the first dictionary which lay at that end. He made a note, examined a grammar, considered some kindred word, and then passed to the next dictionary of some other tongue. H e took each word through the twenty or thirty dictionaries, making notes of his discoveries and passing around his table many times in the course of a day's labor of minute and careful study.®7

Webster felt that he had surpassed Johnson's achievement. "In collecting my materials", he tells Samuel Latham Mitchell, "I probably read many more authors than Johnson did in preparing the materials for his large work"; and in practicing the lexicographer's art, he had gone beyond Johnson's successors: "I am confident my Dictionary contains more real improvements in the number of words and in corrections of definitions than have been introduced by all the compilers since Johnson."98 In fact, Webster owed much more to Johnson than he cared to admit.69 The dictionaries of these two giants of lexicography have been much compared, and are discussed more fully in the following chapters. The point to be made here, however, is that for all his animadversions on the American language, and his attacks on the deficiencies of Johnson's Dictionary, Webster's lexicography, and his view of what a dictionary should be, did not differ fundamentally from that of his predecessors.

1.5.

THE HISTORICAL PRINCIPLE

The hundred years following the publication of Johnson's Dictionary, then, was a period in which lexicography flourished.70 In addition to Webster's dictionaries, the work of his contemporaries Joseph E. Worcester and Charles Richardson demands brief notice. Worcester continued the direct Johnson line by editing Johnson's English Dictionary, as Improved by Todd, and Abridged by Chalmers; with 67 Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford, Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, ed. Emily Ellsworth Ford Skeel (New York, 1912), II, 116. 68 Noah Webster, "To Samuel Latham Mitchell" (June 15, 1807), in Letters, 276. 69 For detailed, point-by-point comparative studies, see Joseph W. Reed, Jr., "Noah Webster's Debt to Samuel Johnson", American Speech XXXVII (1962), 95-105; and Joseph Harold Friend, The Development of American Lexicography, 1798-1864 (The Hague, 1967), 38-46. Both studies demonstrate that Webster's debt to Johnson was considerable. 70 For a detailed discussion of fifty-four unfinished dictionaries in the period between the publication of Johnson's Dictionary and Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, see Allen Walker Read, "Projected English Dictionaries, 1755-1828", Journal of English and Germanic Philology XXXVI (1937), 188-205, and 347-59. Read states (188): "This period is important because in it the puristic attitude came to full flower and dictionary authority became well established in the attitudes of English speakers."

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THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, Combined (Boston, 1827). He published thereafter several other dictionaries, including A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, 1846), and A Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, 1860). The competition between the dictionaries of Worcester and Webster, the so-called "War of the Dictionaries", ran for some thirty-five years. It was less a conflict between opposing linguistic or lexicographical philosophies, however, than between social, political, regional, and, especially, commercial interests. Worcester's dictionaries were of consistently high quality, and maintained the Johnsonian tradition in the United States. In the work of another of Johnson's successors, Charles Richardson, a new principle in lexicography began to reveal itself. Like Webster, Richardson felt that Johnson and succeeding lexicographers had not given adequate etymological information in their dictionaries, since they often cited only recent meanings without tracing these to the original roots.71 Following the etymological theories of John Home Tooke,72 Richardson collected citations from historical sources in an attempt to arrive at what he believed were "the primitive signification" of words. While Tooke's theories, which accepted the Biblical account of the dispersion of tongues literally, were unsound, Richardson's work did demonstrate that citations in a dictionary could convey a word's earliest meanings, and illustrate graphically the changes in meaning the word had undergone. In 1818, Richardson began to contribute material to the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, and in 1836-1837 he published A New Dictionary of the English Language... Illustrated by Quotations from the Best Authors (London, 1836-1837). In this work, Richardson practically eliminated definitions, but supplied in their stead an abundance of illustrative quotations. Richardson's collection of quotations was quite extensive, reaching back to 1300. As Murray has affirmed, Richardson's notion of the utility of quotations for illustrating usage was theoretically correct: Quotations will tell the full meaning of a word, if one has enough of them; but it takes a great many to be enough, and it takes a reader a long time to read and weigh all the quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings which might be put before him in a line or two.. .. Nevertheless, the mass of quotations, most of them with exact references, collected by [Richardson], was a service never to be undervalued or forgotten.78 The traditional evaluation of Richardson's understanding and use of the historical principle in lexicography is justified solely by his chronological collection of quotations, however.74 It was with Richard Chenevix Trench's illumination of 71

Mathews, A Survey of English Dictionaries, 62. John Home Tooke, Diversions of Purley (London, 1786). For a brief account of Tooke's theories and Richardson's relationship thereto, see Sledd and Kolb, 185-91. 7S Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 44-45. 74 Sledd and Kolb, 188. An early anticipation of the historical principle may be found in Archibald Campbell's dialogue, Lexiphanes (c. 1760). Campbell dismisses Johnson's Dictionary as "infinitely short of what I conceive it ought to be", and then discusses his conception of the ideal dictionary, which should include "a distinct treatise on every word that is, or ever has 72

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

27

"some deficiencies in our English dictionaries" 75 that the historical principle was given its first full expression in English, and the modern era of English lexicography began. Trench, in two papers read before the Philological Society of London, scotched the notion of the dictionary as a standard of usage, and announced his conception of the "true idea of a dictionary": A Dictionary,... according to that idea of it which seems to me alone capable of being logically maintained, is an inventory of the language.... It is no task of the maker of it to select the good words of a language. If he fancies that it is so, and begins to pick and choose, to leave this and take that, he will at once go astray. The business which he has undertaken is to collect and arrange all the words, whether good or bad, whether they do or do not commend themselves to his judgment, which . . . those writing in the language have employed. He is an historian of it, not a critic.76 The notion of the dictionary as a standard of the language, says Trench, has misdirected the labors of the lexicographer, and confused the users of dictionaries. "I cannot understand how any writer with the smallest confidence in himself, the least measure of that vigour and vitality which would justify him in addressing his countrymen in written or spoken discourse at all, should consent in this matter to let one self-made d i c t a t o r . . . determine for him what words he should use, and what he should forbear from using." 77 Trench points out that existing dictionaries are incomplete records of the language, giving inadequate histories of words and word families, unrepresentative examples of the earliest uses of words, and unclear differentiations of meanings. Comprehensiveness and historical accuracy are the great virtues of the true dictionary: The lexicographer is making an inventory;... his task is to make his inventory complete. Where he counts words to be needless, affected, pedantic, ill put together, contrary to the genius of the language, there is no objection to his saying so; on the contrary, he may do real service in this way: but let their claim to belong to our book language be the humblest, and he is bound to record them... .78 been, in use". Campbell, however, sees such a work as impractical, and anticipates the scope of the OED: "And what man or body of men are equal to such a task? Besides, were it extant, who could use it, or reap any benefit from it? It would be in itself a library, infinitely more voluminous than the abridgement of our laws in 20 Volumes Folio." (Pp. xxxiv-xxxv. Quoted in Gertrude E. Noyes, "The Critical Reception of Johnson's Dictionary in the Latter Eighteenth Century", Modern Philology LII [1955], 182). 75 Richard Chenevix Trench, "On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries", Transactions of the Philological Society (1857), 3-8. 76 Trench, "On Some Deficiencies", 3-4. 77 Trench, "On Some Deficiencies", 4. 78 Trench, "On Some Deficiencies", 4-5. Trench's comments did not meet without opposition. The Reverend Derwent Coleridge, for example, took the normative point of view, arguing for the "rhetorical principle in lexicography" and the "higher functions of the lexicographer": "The office of a Dictionary", Coleridge states, " . . . is eminently regulative In the case of an old and highly cultivated language,... it is, or ought to be zealously conservative. It sets up a continual protest against innovation...." ("Observations on the Plan of the Society's Proposed New English Dictionary", Transactions of the Philological Society [1806], 156).

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THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

Trench's papers laid down the desiderata for a new English dictionary based on historical principles, which were to record every word, in every sense, that had appeared in the language; and to give all pertinent historical information, including quotations illustrating the first and the last known appearance of every word, as well as every significant point in the history of the word.79 The result was the resolution that "instead of the Supplement to the Standard English Dictionaries now in course of preparation by the Society, a New Dictionary of the English Language be prepared under the authority of the Philological Society";80 and the lexicographical research that produced the Oxford English Dictionary began. A concise statement of the historical principle in lexicography may be found in the Preface to Franz Passow's Über Zweck, Anlage und Ergänzung Griechischer Wörterbücher, which was translated into English in 1843: The dictionary should set forth the life history of each single word according to a convenient and clearly ordered arrangement; it should say where and when each one (only, of course, so far as we know) may first be found, in which directions it developed, what changes it has undergone with regard to its forms or in the development of its meaning, finally by what time it may perchance go out of use and be replaced or driven out by another. In other words, far from ever wishing to interfere, prescribe, or proscribe in the role of lawgiver, it is sufficient to report accurately what is found, and, where necessary, to show adequate proof of what was found.81 That this is the theoretical foundation on which the Oxford English Dictionary is built is clear from this statement by the editor-in-chief, Sir James Murray: The aim of this Dictionary is to furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin, and history of English words now in general use, or known to have been in use at any time during the last seven hundred years. It endeavors (1) to show, with regard to each individual word, when, how, in what shape, and with what signification, it became English; what development of form and meaning it has since received; which of its uses have, in the course of time, become obsolete, and which still survive; what new uses have since arisen, by what processes, and when; (2) to illustrate these facts by a series of quotations ranging from the first known occurrence of the word to the latest, or down to the present day; the word being thus made to exhibit its own history and meaning; and (3) to treat the etymology of each word on the basis of historical fact, and in accordance with the methods and results of modern philological science.82 79

Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 46. "Notices of the Meetings of the Philological Society in 1858", January 7, 1858. Transactions of the Philological Society (1858), 198. 81 Franz Passow, Über Zweck, Anlage und Ergänzung Griechischer Wörterbücher (1812). Quoted in Hans Aarsleff, "The Early History of the OED", Bulletin of the New York Public Library LXVI (1962), 432. Aarsleff argues that the OED is more indebted to Passow and to the lexicographical techniques of Liddell and Scott's version of Passow, the Greek-English Lexicon (London, 1843), than to the earlier English dictionaries and Latin-English glosses. Murray's statement of "lineal development" of the OED from earlier English dictionaries (in Evolution of English Lexicography, 46-51) is not intended, however, as a statement of direct indebtedness, but rather to suggest the sense of a continuous natural growth or "evolution". 82 James A. H. Murray, "Introduction", A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford, 1933), p. vi. 80

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29

The Oxford English Dictionary stands as the greatest of all English wordbooks in which, as Murray states, "lexicography h a s . . . reached its supreme development".83 The methods used to gather the data may therefore be taken as a most representative, indeed ideal, example of lexicographic technique, which have, in the words of its editors, "worked a revolution in the art of lexicography".84 The basis for the dictionary is a collection of "some five million excerpts from English literature of every period amassed by an army of voluntary readers and the editorial staff".85 Such a massive collection of data, the editors state, "could form the only possible foundation for the historical treatment of every word and idiom which is the raison d'etre of the work".8® The data were collected by nearly two thousand volunteer readers, perusing the written literature of the English language throughout its history. Johnson's use of illustrative quotations and Richardson's extension of their function had demonstrated the utility of citations for establishing the typology, meaning, and usage characteristics of a word. Therefore, readers were directed to collect such citations, and to put them on small slips of paper, listing the word, the date, author, title and page of the source, and the full quotation. Readers were issued the following directions: M a k e a quotation for every word that strikes y o u as rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar, or used in a peculiar way. Take special note of passages which s h o w or imply that a word is either n e w and tentative, or needing explanation as obsolete or archaic, and w h i c h thus help to f i x the date of its introduction or disuse. M a k e as many quotations as you can for ordinary words, especially w h e n they are used significantly, and tend by the context to explain or suggest their o w n meaning. 8 7

A great corpus of actual written usage was thus accumulated, theoretically covering every instance of the written use of every word in the language. This material was then alphabetized, run through several stages of editing, and compiled into the twelve volume OED.8S Periodic updating by means of supplements, keyed to the same historical principle, assures the continuing value and usefulness of this supreme achievement of English lexicography.89 ps

Murray, Evolution of English Lexicography, 49. James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and C. T. Onions, "Preface", The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1961), p. v. 85 Murray et al., "Preface", OED. The need for the collaborative effort of many readers, of course, is apparent from the scope of the project. Beyond doubt, the one-man comprehensive dictionary is a thing of the past. (See Frank H. Vizetelly, "The Ideal Dictionary", American Speech I [1926], 176). 88 Murray et al., "Preface", OED. 87 Sir James A. H. Murray, et al., "Historical Introduction", The Oxford English Dictionary, p. xv. 88 See Sir James A. H. Murray, "The Philological Society's Dictionary" and "Problems and Principles in Lexicography", in "Eighth Annual Address of the President to the Philological Society", Transactions of the Philological Society (1879), 567-86; and Frank H. Vizetelly, "A Monumental Dictionary on Historical Principles", American Speech IV (1929), 22-27. 88 See R. W. Burchfield, "O.E.D.: A New Supplement", Essays and Studies XIV (London, 1961), 35-51.

84

30

THE ORIGINS OF ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

With the development of the historical principle, a new era of descriptive lexicography began. The rigorous and exacting research of nineteenth and twentieth century lexicographers has achieved more than Samuel Johnson could have imagined possible: after the OED, such specialized wordbooks as the Dictionary of American English, A Dictionary of Americanisms, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, the Middle English Dictionary, and others, have followed.90 In the light of this research, it would not seem possible that the notion of the dictionary as the standard of the language could survive; but as the following chapters will attempt to show, authoritarian attitudes towards the English language and English dictionaries have persisted to the present day.

i0

Compare the statement of R. W. Chapman: "There is high authority for the view that the day of the comprehensive general dictionary... is over." (Lexicography [Oxford, 1948], 16.)

2 THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

2.1.

TOWARD AN ACADEMY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Although Benjamin Martin had repudiated any attempt to stabilize change in language as "utterly vain and impertinent",1 the selectivity implicit in his Lingua Britannica Reformata of 1747 helped redefine the sociolinguistic role of the lexicographer and the social function of the dictionary. If the lexicographer may choose to exclude certain locutions from his dictionary, might not such selection serve to keep the language in conformance with the rules of reason? And might not this process of lexicography work towards purifying the language of corruption, barbarisms, vulgarisms, and the like? The obsession with purifying English was not new to the eighteenth century. Undoubtedly, the rapid linguistic change of the Renaissance acted as a catalyst for this reaction. In 1557, for example, Sir John Cheke wrote to "his loving frind Mayster Thomas Hoby": I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges, wherin if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never payeng, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tung naturallie and praisablie utter her meaning, when she bouroweth no counterfeitness of other tunges to attire her self withall, but useth plainlie her o w n , . . . and if she want at ani tiim (as being unperfight she must) yet let her borow with suche bashfulnes, that it mai appear, that if either the mould of our own tung could serve us to fascion a woord of our own, or if the old denisoned wordes could content and ease this neede, we wold not boldly venture of unknowen wordes. 2

Cheke's statement may be taken as representative of the earliest puristic or authoritarian attitudes towards the English language. These attitudes have persisted throughout the history of modern English, and have led often to attempts to establish an Academy of the English language, in emulation of the Academie Frangaise 1 Benjamin Martin, "Physico-Grammatical Essay on the Propriety and Rationale of the English Tongue", Lingua Britannica Reformata (London, 1749), 111. 2 Sir John Cheke, "Letter to Thomas Hoby", in Prose of the English Renaissance, ed. J. William Hebel, Hoyt H. Hudson, Francis R. Johnson, and A. Wigfall Green (New York, 1952), 146.

32

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

and the Italian Accademia della Crusca. Such an academy would pronounce ex cathedra on the acceptability of linguistic forms, and thus provide an official standard of correctness. This idea was suggested by several important seventeenthcentury figures, and received its fullest articulation in the early eighteenth century in the Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Language3 of Jonathan Swift. The idea of an academy to sanction English usage, and regulate linguistic change, may be traced to the late sixteenth century. The study of Latin and Greek led naturally to a parallel interest in the English language; but whereas the ancient languages were no longer subject to change, English early was seen to be in continual flux. The recognition of this fact led to proposals for making the native language more permanent, like Latin. The general scheme was to establish a body of scholars, who would govern the language by means of a standard grammar and dictionary. The first suggestion of this type was apparently that by John Baret in the preamble to the letter A in his An Alvearie, or Triple Dictionarie, in Englishe, Latin, and French (1573), which proposed that the orthography of the native language be reformed by a group of scholars under royal approval.4 The idea received wide currency in the seventeenth century. Richard Carew, in 1605, commented: It imports n o little disgrace t o our N a t i o n that others have so many Academyes, and w e e n o n e at all, especially seeing w e e want not choice of wyttes every w a y matcheable with theirs, both for number and sufficyency. Such a work is worthy of your solicitation and indevour, and y o u o w e yt to your o w n e fame, and the g o o d of your C o u n t r e y . . . . 5

Carew does not mention the function of preserving the language, but some fifty years later, John Dryden made the connection. "I am sorry", Dryden writes in 1664, "that (speaking so noble a language as we do) we do not a more certain measure of it, as they have in France, where they have an Academy erected for that purpose... ."· That same year the Royal Society, perhaps with Dryden's words in mind,7 established a committee for improving the English language, comprising "several persons of the society, whose genius was very proper and inclined to improve the English tongue".8 Among the members of this committee were Dryden, 3

Jonathan Swift, A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Language, Polite Conversations, Etc.: Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis with Louis Landa, IV (Oxford, 1957). 4 Alexander Brede, "The Idea of an English Language Academy", English Journal (College Edition) X X V I (1937), 561. 5 Richard Carew, "Letter to Sir Robert Cotton", April, 1605. Quoted in Edmund Freeman, "A Proposal for an English Academy in 1660", Modern Language Review XIX (1924), 292. 6 John Dryden, "Dedication to Rival Ladies", Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, I (Oxford, 1926), 5. 7 Oliver F. Emerson, "John Dryden and the British Academy", Proceedings of the British Academy X (1921), 58. See also Oliver F. Emerson, "Dryden and the English Academy", Modern Language Review X X (1925), 189-90, in which Emerson discounts Freeman's suggestion ( M L R XIX: 291-300) of Robert Hooke as an advocate of an English academy antedating Dryden. 8 Thomas Birch, History of the Royal Society of London, I (London, 1756), 499.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

33

John Evelyn, and Sir Peter Wyche. Evelyn, after visiting the Accademia della Crusca, wrote Wyche in 1665; he pointed out the causes of the changes, or "corruption", evident in the English language: The reason both of additions to, and the corruptions of the English language, as of most other tongues, has proceeded from the same causes; namely, from Victories, Plantations, Frontieres, Staples of Com'erce, Pedantry of Schooles, Affectation of Travellers, Translations, Fancy and style of Court, Vernility & mincing of Citizens, Pupils, Political Remonstrances, Theatres, Shopps, &c.9 Evelyn called for extensive reforms in the language, predicated on more comprehensive linguistic knowledge: I would therefore humbly propose that there might first be compil'd a Gram'ar for the Praecepts; w h i c h . . . might onely insist on the Rules, the sole meanes to render it a learned & learnable tongue. That with this a more certaine Orthography were introduc'd, as by leaving out superfluous letters, &c.: such a s . . . u in H o n o u r . . . . To this might follow a lexicon or Collection of all the pure English-Words by themselves; then those which are derivative... then, the symbolical; so as no innovation might be us'd or favour'd; at least till there should arise some necessity of providing a new Edition, & of amplifying the old upon mature advice. That in order to this, some one were appointed to collect all the technical W o r d s . . . . That things difficult to be translated or express'd . . . were better interpreted than as yet we find them in Dictionaries.... That a full Catalogue of exotic W o r d s . . . were exhibited. . . . Previous to this it would be enquir'd what particular Dialects, Idiomes, and Proverbs were in use in every several Country of England, for the Words of the present age being properly the Vernacula, special reguard is to be had of them. And happly it were not amiss, that we had a Collection of the most quaint and Courtly expressions. . . . Finally. There must be a stock of reputation gain'd by some publiq writings and compositions of the Members of this Assembly, so that others may not thinke it dishonor to come under the test, or accept them for judges and approbators; And if the designe were arriv'd thus far, I conceive a very small matter would dispatch the art of Rhetoric, which the French propos'd as one of the first things they recommended to their late Academitians.10 Following the founding of the Academie Fran§aise in 1635, comparisons with continental culture were more and more inevitable, and other proposals for an academy exercising rule over language were forthcoming. The anonymous editor of Stephen Skinner's Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671), for example, wishing that English were as free from solecisms and barbarisms as classical Latin, suggested that England might follow the example of Italy and France, and establish an academy. 11 As the idea of an academy gained currency, proposals became more specific. Daniel Defoe, in his Essay on Projects (1697), was clear on the functions » "Letter to Sir Peter Wyche", June 20, 1665, in Diary of John Evelyn, ed. William Bray (London, 1906), 309-312. Quoted in B. S. Monroe, "An English Academy", Modern Philology VIII (1910), 110-11. 10 Ibid. II Sledd and Kolb, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, 5.

34

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

of such an authority. The English language, he declared, "is not at all less worthy the labour of such a society than the French, and capable of much greater perfection". Defoe urged the king to glorify the memory of his reign by establishing this society, the function and authority of which he outlined in detail: The work of this society should be to encourage polite learning, to polish and refine the English tongue, and advance the so much neglected faculty of correct language, to establish purity and propriety of stile, and to purge it from all the irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced; and all those innovations in speech, if I may call them such, which some dogmatic writers have the confidence to foster upon their native language, as if their authority were sufficient to make their own fancy legitimate. By such a society I dare say the true glory of our English stile would appear and among all the learned part of the world, be esteemed, as it really is, the noblest and most comprehensive of all the vulgar languages in the world. The voice of this society should be sufficient authority for the usage of words, and sufficient also to expose the innovations of other mens fancies; they should preside with a sort of judicature over the learning of the age, and have liberty to correct and censure the exorbitance of writers.... The exercises of this society would be lectures on the English tongue, essays on the nature, origin, usage, authorities and differences of words, on the propriety, purity, and cadence of stile, and of the politeness and manner in writing; reflections upon irregular usages, and corrections of erroneous customs in words; and in short, everything that would appear necessary to the bringing our English tongue to a due perfection... ,12 The sense of corruption of the language and the demand for a regulating body carries over into the eighteenth century. Addison, in the Spectator papers, observed that if questions of usage ever were to be resolved, "ascertainment" of the language was necessary: moreover, an Academy was the proper means to accomplish this. " I have often wished", he writes, "that as in our constitution there are several persons whose Business it is to watch over our Laws, our Liberties and Commerce, certain men might be set apart, as Super-intendants of our Language." 1 3 "Controversies of Grammar and Idiom", Addison says, shall "never be decided till we have something like an Academy, that by the best authorities and rules drawn from the analogy of languages shall settle all controversies... , " 1 4 The great spokesman for an English academy, however, was Jonathan Swift. In a letter to The Tatler, Swift decries "the continual corruption of the English tongue, which without some timely remedy, will suffer more by the false refinements of twenty years past, than it hath been improved in the foregoing hundred". 15 Proposing that the editor, Isaac Bickerstaff, "make use of [his] authority as Censor", Swift suggested an annual Index Expurgatorius to rid the language of offensive or 12

Daniel Defoe, Essay on Projects (1697) in Henry Morley, ed., The Earlier Life and the

Chief Earlier Works of Daniel Defoe (London, 1889), 125-26. 13 Spectator, No. 165, September 8, 1711. The Works of Joseph Addison, I (New York, 1837),

245.

14 15

Spectator, No. 135, August 11, 1711. Works, 204. The Tatler, No. 230, September 28, 1710, in The

Bickerstaff, Esq., IV (London, 1759), 232.

Tatler;

Or, Lucubrations

of

Isaac

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

35

16

"barbarous" words and phrases. In May of 1712, Swift addressed a letter to the lord treasurer, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, which was published as A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue. In the Proposal, Swift complains that "our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no Means in Proportion to its daily Corruptions; that the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many instances, it offends against every Part of Grammar".17 The English language, Swift says, is less refined than the Italian, French, or Spanish, because it is further removed from the classical Latin tongue. But even Latin suffered "perpetual changes", becoming corrupt as Roman civilization declined. Yet Swift sees no reason why such change must be inevitable. He cites the "Purity of the Greek Tongue" in the thousand years from Homer to Plutarch, and the two thousand year old literature of the Chinese as examples of linguistic stability. Just as Latin reached a state of perfection before decaying, so might English; and once perfection were attained, with English "refined to a certain Standard, perhaps there might be Ways to fix it for ever... ."18 Swift attempts to demonstrate the need for order and stability in language by outlining the various forms of corruption following the Civil War: licentiousness in religion, morals, and even language, had produced "such an Infusion of Enthusiastick Jargon... as was not shaken off in many years after".19 The court, ordinarily the standard of propriety in manners and correctness in speech, has "ever since continued the worst School in England, for that Accomplishment".20 The absence of this standard has allowed the corruption of the language to go unchecked. The "barbarous custom of abbreviating words" practiced by the poets, so as to fit their meters, has spread to books and everyday speech. The tendency to spell as one speaks (with "the obvious Inconvenience of utterly destroying.. . Etymology"), new coinages, the fashionable slang of the universities, all are evidence to Swift of the endemic English tendency to "lapse into the Barbarity of those Northern Nations from whom we are descended".21 Clearly, Swift argues, the example of the French should be followed, and order must be established. The means for effecting this is to institute an academy, which would formulate rules of correctness for the language: In order to reform our Language; I conceive, my Lord, that a free judicious Choice should be made of such Persons, as are generally allowed to be best qualified for such a Work, without any regard to Quality, Party, or Profession. These to a certain Number, 18

The Tatler, 236. Swift, A Proposal Works, IV, 6. 18 A Proposal, 9. 18 A Proposal, 10. 20 A Proposal, 10. 21 A Proposal, 12. 17

for

Correcting,

Improving,

and

Ascertaining

the

English

Language,

36

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

at least, should assemble at some appointed Time and Place, and fix on Rules by which they design to proceed. What Methods they will take, is not for me to prescribe.22

The ultimate aim of this group, once having established standards of correctness, would be to continue to enforce those standards, and thus guard the purity of the language. . . . What I have most at heart, is, that some Method should be thought on for Ascertaining and Fixing our Language for ever, after such Alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite. For I am of Opinion, that it is better a Language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing; and we must give over at one Time or other, or at length infallibly change for the worse 23

Swift recognizes that some change in language is inevitable, and even desirable, as the accomplishments of law, religion, navigation, and commerce continue. But such change would always be additive, as the needs of the society required; and invariably, change would be controlled by the sanction of the academy: . . . Where I say that I would have our language, after it is duly correct, always to last; I do not mean that it should never be enlarged: Provided, that no Word, which a Society shall give a Sanction to, be afterwards antiquated and exploded, they may have Liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find Occasion for: Because then the old Books will yet be always valuable according to their intrinsick Worth, and not thrown aside on Account of unintelligible Words and Phrases, which appear harsh and uncouth, only because they are out of Fashion. 24

If the English language is permitted to decay, Swift warns, historians two hundred years hence will be hard put to comprehend the writings of Swift's own time, and much will be lost. "How then shall any Man, who hath a Genius for History, equal to the best of the Antients, be able to undertake such a Work with Spirit and Chearfulness, when he considers, that he will be read with Pleasure but a very few Years, and in an Age or two shall hardly be understood without an Interpreter?"25 On the other hand, if stability and order were achieved, the immortality of English writers, and a permanent reverence for the great accomplishments of English heads of state, would be assured to posterity. In spite of the eloquence of Swift's proposal, an academy was not established,28 although his plan was received with both approval and heated discussion.27 Samuel 22

A Proposal, 13-14. A Proposal, 14. 24 A Proposal, 15. 25 A Proposal, 18. 28 The British Academy was established in 1902, but does not assume any regulatory function. Its object is "the promotion of study of the moral and political sciences, including history, philosophy, law, politics, economics, archaeology, and philology". (Freeman, 291.) 27 McKnight quotes David Mallet's dedication to Lord Chesterfield of his Amyntor and Theodora (1747), which states that the plan for an academy "was agreed to by the late Treasurer of Oxford: and a certain annual sum, for the support of it, was certainly promised " (McKnight, Modern English in the Making [New York, 1930], 322.) On the other hand, Swift's Proposal was rebutted by two Whig pamphlets, the first John Oldmixon's Reflections on Dr. 23

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

37

Johnson recognized that Swift's linguistic premises were subject to question, and in the Preface to his Dictionary, made some pointed criticism: Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language, allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, but proposes that none should be suffered to become obsolete. But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once by disuse become unfamiliar, and by unfamiliarity unpleasing?28 Johnson, though very much interested in retarding linguistic change, found the notion of an academy oppressive. Not wishing to see "dependance multiplied", he saw the notion of an academy counter to the "spirit of English liberty".29 He wrote in the Lives of the Poets: The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, [Swift] thinks attainable, he proposes to secure by instituting an academy; the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey, and which, being renewed by successive elections, would, in a short time, have differed from itself.... Such a society might, perhaps, without much difficulty, be collected; but that it would produce what is expected from it, may be doubted.... In this country an academy could be expected to do but little. If the academician's place were profitable, it would be given by interest; if attendance were gratuitous, it would be rarely paid; and no man would endure the least disgust. Unanimity is impossible, and debate would separate the assembly. But suppose the philological decree made and promulgated, what would be its authority? In absolute governments, there is, sometimes a general reverence paid to all that has the sanction of power, and the countenance of greatness. How little this is the state of our country needs not to be told. We live in an age in which it is a kind of publick sport to refuse all respect that cannot be enforced. The edicts of an English academy would, probably, be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey them. The present manners of our nation would deride authority. . . .30 Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and the second by Arthur Mainwaring and an unknown collaborator, The British Academy: Being a New-Erected Society for the Advancement of Wit and Learning: with Some few Observations upon It (1712). Although Swift certainly cherished the idea of regulating the language, political considerations were apparently significant as well: according to a letter Swift wrote to his wife, he seems to have published the Proposal over his own name in order to dissociate the Whigs from the project, and thus ensure that the prestige would accrue to Harley and himself (Louis A. Landa, "Introduction", John Oldmixon's Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712); and Arthur Mainwaring's The British Academy (1712), Augustan Reprint Society, VI, No. 1 [September, 1948], 2-5). Landa's argument suggests that authoritarian attitudes towards language do not exist in isolation, but correlate with social and political attitudes as well. =8 Johnson, "Preface", 3. 29 Johnson, "Preface", 4. 30 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets (Oxford, 1926), III, 16; I, 164-65. Charles C. Fries states that "although there were still echoes of these proposals for a half century after the passing of Queen Anne, it was with the coming of the Hanoverians in 1714 that hope of imitating the French Academy vanished" ("The Rules of Common School Grammars", PMLA XLII [1927], 235). Yet, in a discussion of subsequent proposals ("Suggestions for an Academy in England in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century", Modern Philology XXXVI [1938],

38

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

Johnson's recognition of the inherent fallacy of an English academy of language has been confirmed by the experience of linguistic history. The quest for some authority in language, intensified by the rapidity of the linguistic changes of the period, was real, however. Not surprisingly, it was Johnson, finally, who answered the call. His Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, seemed at last to provide a standard of usage for English.

2.2.

THE NEED FOR A N ENGLISH DICTIONARY

The need for a dictionary of English and a permanent record of English usage had been recognized as early as the sixteenth century. The schoolmaster Richard Mulcaster, expressing in his marginal note the hope, "A perfit English dictionary wished for", writes in 1582: It were a thing verie praiseworthie in my opinion, and no less profitable then praise worthie, if som one well learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we vse in our English tung, whether naturall or incorporate, out of all professions, as well learned as not, into one dictionarie, and besides the right writing, which is incident to the Alphabete, wold open vnto vs therein, both their naturall force, and their proper vse: that by his honest trauell we might be as able to iudge of our own tung, which we haue by rote, as ar of others, which we learn by rule.81 The origin of the notion of the dictionary as supreme authority in language, however, is obscure. As early as 1589, Puttenham writes: "Herein we are already ruled by the English Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men." 32 Since Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, the first purely English dictionary, was not published until 1604, Puttenham's reference must be to the Latin-English dictionaries of his time, probably the Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot (1538) and Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae (1565). In the seventeenth century, Wanley notes that "a Dictionary fixing the English language as the French and Italian would be a desirable book." 33 Dryden comments in 1693:

145-56), Allen Walker Read has demonstrated the tenacity of the academy idea; he writes: "The consensus of stated opinion during this period was clearly in favor of an academy. Political and social factors made any such establishment out of the question; but the fact that these projectors [i.e., of proposals for a regulating authority in language] presented their arguments in the face of such obstacles tends to show that the desirability of regulating and 'ascertaining' the language was a fundamental tenet in their linguistic outlook" (156). For a full discussion of other suggestions, see also Η. M. Flasdieck, Der Gedanke einer englischen Sprachakademie in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Jena, 1928); Flasdieck discusses the proposals of Lord Chesterfield, Lord Orrery, Thomas Sheridan, Arthur Murphy, and T. Search, as well as the negative criticism of Johnson, Joseph Priestley, and others. S1 Richard Mulcaster, Mulcaster's Elementarie, ed. Ε. Τ. Campagnac (Oxford, 1925), 187. 92 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), English Reprints, I, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1869), 157. 53 Quoted in Sledd and Kolb, 5.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

39

. . . We have yet no English prosodia, not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous;... I rather fear a declination of the language, than hope an advancement of it in the present age.34 In 1724, the anonymous authors of The Many Advantages of a Good Language, members of a club devoted to the cultivation of English, speak of examining "the present state of the Language, to fix what is right by Grammars and Dictionaries. . . . " Remarking the disordered state of the language, they write: Its very Alphabet is only what Chance has made it, and have no Grammar of it that is taught in any school;... We bring it into method with an account of the Derivations, and We have no collection of its Idioms, Phrases, and right uses

is much out of Order. We have no good dictionary to Senses and Uses of Words: of its Particles.35

Similarly, Bishop Warburton, in the introduction to his edition of Shakespeare, in 1747 decries the lack of a "Test or Standard to apply to, in cases of doubt or difficulty.... For we have neither Grammar nor Dictionary, neither Chart nor Compass, to guide us through this wide sea of words."38 Finally, in 1752, Lord Chesterfield, giving voice to the linguistic ideals of his age and environment,87 laments that "pedantry and an affectation of learning have . . . let our own [language] be neglected to such a degree, that though we have ten thousand Greek and Latin grammars and dictionaries, we have not yet a single one on English."38 Chesterfield's statement is, of course, inaccurate, as some twenty English dictionaries had been published by 1752. But for Chesterfield, existing dictionaries were mere word-lists, and did not answer the need for an authoritative standard of usage. The dictionary which Chesterfield contemplated would subject words to a process of "examining, sifting, winnowing,... purifying, and finally fixing", and judge them in terms of "sound", as well as "propriety".39 And as Johnson neared the completion of his Dictionary, Chesterfield published his famous statement in The World (No. 100 [November 28, 1754]): It must be owned that our language is, at present, in a state of anarchy, and hitherto, perhaps, it may not have been the worse for it. During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have been imported, adopted, and naturalized from other languages, which have greatly enriched our o w n . . . . The time for discrimination seems to be now come. Toleration, adoption, and naturalization, have run their lengths. Good order and authority are now necessary. But where shall we find them, and at the same time, the obedience due to them? We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and choose a dictator. Upon this principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare, that I make a total sur34

John Dryden, "Discourse of Satire", Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, II, 110. Quoted in McKnight, Modern English in the Making, 363. M Quoted in Starnes and Noyes, 148. 37 See J. H. Neumann, "Chesterfield and the Standard of Usage in English", Modern Language Quarterly VII (1946), 463-75. 38 "Letter to the Bishop of Clonfert", No. 1830 (May, 1752?), The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobree, V (London, 1932), 1877. 39 Neumann, 465. 35

40

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

render of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject to the said Mr. Johnson during the term of his dictatorship...

The relationship between Chesterfield and Johnson, with Johnson's hopes for patronage disappointed, has been much discussed. Both were representative of the sociolinguistic currents of their time in desiring to stabilize language once and for all, and both thought, or at least hoped, that the dictionary might accomplish that end. As Starnes and Noyes state, Samuel Johnson does indeed stand as "the recognized inheritor and representative of all the schemes for purifying and fixing the language".41

2.3.

THE DICTIONARY AS AUTHORITY: SAMUEL JOHNSON

In the "Plan of A Dictionary", written in 1747, Johnson advances the hope that his dictionary will serve as an instrument for stabilizing the language, and provide the much-sought authoritative standard. His first thoughts concerning this project, he says, were of the prospect of "employment, which, tho' not splendid, would be useful". The prospect of Lord Chesterfield's patronage, however, has raised other considerations: I had read indeed of times, in which princes and statesmen thought it part of their honour to promote the improvement of their native tongues, and in which dictionaries were written under the protection of greatness. To the patrons of such undertakings, I willingly paid the homage of believing that they, who were thus solicitous for the perpetuity of their language, had reason to expect that their actions would be celebrated by posterity, and that the eloquence which they promoted would be employed in their praise. But I considered such acts of beneficence as prodigies, recorded rather to raise wonder than expectation; and content with the terms that I had stipulated, had not suffer'd my imagination to flatter me with any other encouragement, when I found that my design had been thought by your Lordship of importance sufficient to attract your favour.42

Esteemed patronage, however, has the practical disadvantage of raising expectation, which, "when her wings are once expanded, easily reaches heights which performance never will attain, and when she has mounted the summit of perfection, derides her follower, who dies in the pursuit". Johnson therefore presents the plan of his dictionary for Lord Chesterfield's comment.48 "One great end of this undertaking", states Johnson, "is to fix the English 40

Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (Oxford, 1924), 171-72. Starnes and Noyes, 273. 42 Samuel Johnson, "The Plan of A Dictionary of the English Language" (1747), in Johnson: Prose and Poetry, ed. Mona Wilson (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 122. 43 For a detailed account of the various stages and revisions, and the commentary made by Chesterfield and others, of the "Plan", see Sledd and Kolb, "The Composition and Publication of the Plan of a Dictionary", in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, 46-84. See also R. W. Chapman's textual study, "Johnson's Plan of a Dictionary", Review of English Studies II (1926), 216-18. 41

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

41

44

language". The "chief intent" of this new dictionary is "to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom".45 To accomplish this, and thus bring into existence "the exact and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary", it would be necessary to admit only those words which are purely English, those "used in the general intercourse of life", or those found in the work of men "whom we commonly stile polite writers". Yet, Johnson sees that the nature of a dictionary will require something more. To include some words of foreign origin but not others would seem inconsistent with the laws of reason and analogy; to exclude all such words would eliminate a significant portion of the English vocabulary, and thus circumscribe the usefulness of the work, which after all must finally determine its value. Johnson is caught here by the rapid increase in the English vocabulary, the introduction of "inkhorn" and "aureate" terms as well as the assimilation of many others, during the previous century and a half. Since "it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner",4· words peculiar to the professions of war, navigation, the law, medicine, and commerce, which the reader of history or travel may encounter, must be included. Other words, such as the names of common animals and plants, cannot be omitted, since some may be less known than others, and "who shall fix the limits of the reader's learning?"47 Moreover, since readers turn to the dictionary for information other than meaning, such as pronunciation and etymologies, even those words requiring only trivial explanations must be included. Johnson then discusses two major facets of the work, the orthography and the pronunciation. Since order, stability, and permanence are his main considerations, he gives the written language priority over the spoken. Spelling, which was once most uncertain, he notes has stabilized considerably. However, inconsistencies still exist, which evade resolution: it is difficult "to state a rule by which we may decide between custom and reason, or between the equiponderant authorities of writers alike eminent for judgment and accuracy".48 Some men would write as they speak, but since pronunciation is so prone to variation, no fixed orthographic standard will therefore obtain; it may be asked, says Johnson, "why men do not rather speak as they write".49 In denoting the accent of words, the dictionary also can aid in fixing the pronunciation as well, a most important factor. Since "the first change will naturally begin by corruptions in the living speech", to stabilize pronunciation "is of great importance to the duration of a language".50 Johnson states that the authoritative nature of the dictionary must rest finally on the authorities it cites; he has preferred "writers of the first reputation" to 44

Johnson, Johnson, •>« Johnson, 47 Johnson, 48 Johnson, 49 Johnson, 50 Johnson, 45

"Plan", "Plan", "Plan", "Plan", "Plan", "Plan", "Plan",

in Wilson, in Wilson, in Wilson, in Wilson, in Wilson, in Wilson, in Wilson,

127. 123. 123. 125. 125. 126. 127.

42

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

others, which, he tells us, "were selected by Mr. Pope".51 Regarding his own authority concerning "questions of purity and propriety", Johnson explains: . . . I was once in doubt whether I should not attribute to myself too much in attempting to decide them, and whether my province was to extend beyond the proposition of the question, and the display of the suffrages on each side; but I have since been determined by your lordship's [Chesterfield's] opinion, to interpose my own judgment, and shall therefore endeavor to support what appears to be most consonant to grammar and reason.... I may hope, my Lord, that since you, whose authority in our language is so generally acknowledged, have commissioned me to declare my own opinion, I shall be considered as exercising a kind of vicarious jurisdiction; and that the power which might have been denied to my own claim, will be readily allowed me as the delegate of your Lordship.52 Such authority is fundamental to Johnson's conception of a dictionary, if that work is to fulfill its purpose. Johnson concludes his "Plan" as he has begun, restating the ends for which the lexicographer must strive: This, my Lord, is my idea of an English Dictionary, a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. And though... to correct the language of nations by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality, may be tasks equally difficult; yet as it is unavoidable to wish, it is natural to hope, that your Lordship's patronage may not be wholly lost; that it may contribute to the preservation of antient, and the improvement of modern writers; that it may promote the reformation of those translators, who for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotic dialect of heterogeneous phrases; and awaken to the care of purer diction, some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of stile. . . .53 In the Preface to the Dictionary, published in 1755, the tone of Johnson's assertions about linguistic change and the function of the dictionary is moderated, however. All change, as he said in the "Plan", is still "of itself an evil":54 "There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction."55 Some eight years of philological study have demonstrated to Johnson, however, that "constancy and stability" are ideals impossible of achievement, and that to believe otherwise is folly. Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition. With this consequence I will confess that I flattered myself a while but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexico"

Johnson, Johnson, 5' Johnson, 54 Johnson, M Johnson, 52

"Plan", in Wilson, 137. "Plan", in Wilson, 136. "Plan", in Wilson, 138. "Plan", in Wilson, 126. "Preface", 1.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

43

grapher be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, or affectation. With this hope, however, academies have been instituted;... but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.56

The changes occurring in language, Johnson says, stem from a variety of causes, which, although slow and often imperceptible, are "as much superior to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide". 87 In addition to conquests and migrations, subtler forces, such as the demands of commerce, new knowledge and inventions, metaphoric extensions, and borrowings from other languages will result inevitably in change. Yet to know the strength of the enemy is not to surrender. Johnson still argues the importance of the conservative view of language: If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitition, let us make some struggles for our language.58

In these struggles, the lexicographer has a special role, standing in the vanguard of the forces of conservatism: "Every language has . . . its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe." 59 Judging from history, the notion of the dictionary as authoritative standard in language, and the ancillary belief that it is the lexicographer's responsibility to preserve the language from corruption, have had a long and widely popular existence. Although difficult to trace, the belief that the lexicographer can direct the course of the language by proscribing certain forms or meanings probably was not original with Johnson. Yet, it may be that Johnson's statement regenerated that belief, and served to temper the belief in the authority of an academy.80

2.4. THE RECEPTION OF JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY

The inevitable comparison between Johnson's Dictionary and the dictionaries of the Academie Frangaise and the Accademia della Crusca, articulated by Chesterfield 58

Johnson, "Preface", 3. Johnson, "Preface", 3. 58 Johnson, "Preface", 4. 59 Johnson, "Preface", 1. e ® Sledd and Kolb, 182. 57

44

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

in his letter to the World, became a commonplace. David Garrick's epigram, "On Johnson's Dictionary", figured the lexicographer as a warrior: And Johnson, well arm'd, like a hero of yore, Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more. 9 1

A review of the Dictionary printed in the same issue of Gentleman's Magazine following publication in April, 1755, exhorted, "let not a n y . . . depreciate, for trivial imperfections, a work in which perfection was not possible to man; or attempt to withhold the honour which is due to him, who alone has effected in seven years, what the joint labor of forty academicians could not produce to a neighbouring nation in less than half a century".62 The London Chronicle for April 12-14, 1757, referring to Johnson's work, spoke of . . . that Monumentum Aere Perennius which he hath erected in Honour of his native Tongue; we mean his Dictionary, in which he hath supplied the Want of an Academy of Belles Lettres, and performed Wonders towards fixing our Grammar, and ascertaining the determinate Meaning of Words, which are known to be in their own Nature of a very unstable and fluctuating Quality. To his Labours it may hereafter be owing that our Drydens, our Addisons, and our Popes shall not become as obsolete and unintelligible as Chaucer. 8 3

Since, in popular opinion, Johnson had matched or excelled the performance of the continental academies, his authority on "questions of purity and property" was frequently affirmed, and hence, by implication, the sociolinguistic authority of the dictionary as well. Indeed, in a critical article appearing in the Edinburgh Review for 1755, Adam Smith decried the fact that Johnson had not exercised his authority fully enough: A Dictionary of the English Language . . . has never hitherto been attempted with the least degree of success. T o explain hard words and terms of art, seems to have been the chief purpose of all the former compositions which have borne the title of English Dictionaries. Mr. Johnson has extended his views much farther, and has made a very full collection of all the different meanings of each English word, justified by examples from authors of good reputation. When we compare this book with other dictionaries, the merit of its author appears very e x t r a o r d i n a r y . . . . Most words, we believe, are to be found in the Dictionary, that ever were . . . suspected to be English; but we can not help wishing that the author had trusted less to the judgment of those who may consult him, and had oftener passed his own censure upon those words which are not of approved use, though sometimes to be met with in authors of no mean name. 64

On the other hand, Abel Boyer in 1768 complained in the Preface to his FrenchEnglish dictionary of his difficulty in choosing words from Johnson's Dictionary 61

David Garrick, "On Johnson's Dictionary", Gentleman's Magazine XXV, 190. Quoted in Gertrude E. Noyes, "The Critical Reception of Johnson's Dictionary in the Latter Eighteenth Century", Modern Philology LII (1955), 177. 62 Quoted in Noyes, "Critical Reception". « London Chronicle, April 12-14, 1757. Quoted in Sledd and Kolb, 150. 84 Adam Smith, "Review", Edinburgh Review (1755). Quoted in Stanley Rypine, "Johnson's Dictionary Reviewed by His Contemporaries", Philological Quarterly IV (July, 1925), 283.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

45

on the basis of purity, without the sanction of an English academy.65 Yet it was acknowledged by many that Johnson and his Dictionary had provided the authoritative standard for the English language. Johnson had therefore accomplished that for which the continental academies had been instituted, and had perhaps achieved stability for the language. "If our language should ever be fixed", wrote Thomas Sheridan in 1769, "[Johnson] must be considered by all posterity as the founder, and his dictionary as the cornerstone".68 After Johnson's death in December, 1784, the eulogies helped to perpetuate the notion that Johnson had fixed the language. An article in the Gentleman's Magazine spoke of Johnson's reputation, which was "as great for compiling, digesting, and ascertaining the English language as if he had invented it".67 Similarly, the Reverend James Towers' study of Johnson's life commends the lexicographer for "having rendered a signal service to the republic of letters": His Dictionary was a work of great labour, and great merit, and has not been praised more than it deserves. That it has faults cannot be denied nor would any man, who was at all competent to judge of such a work, suppose it possible that it should be without. . . . As our language had then attained to a considerable degree of perfection, it was important that a common standard should be established, which might at least have some tendency to prevent that perpetual fluctuation, to which languages are subject, and thereby to secure to the English language, and to English authors, a more permanent duration.68

Johnson had noted in his "Plan of a Dictionary" that the first changes in language "will naturally begin by corruptions in the living speech";69 to fix the language therefore required stabilizing the sounds of language. But Johnson had refrained from the attempt, marking in the word list only the primary stress of words. Several dictionaries which followed Johnson's, such as those of Kenrick, Sheridan, and Walker, gave fuller attention to orthoepy, or pronunciation, than had Johnson.70 From these may be gleaned the currency of notions of lexicographic authority, and the veneration in which Johnson was held by other dictionary makers. In his Preface to A New Dictionary of the English Language (1773), William Kenrick freely acknowledged his debt to Johnson and affirmed Johnson's 65

Abel Boyer, Dictionnaire Royal Francois-Anglois et Anglois-Francois (Lyons, 1768). Quoted in Sledd and Kolb, 160. 68 Thomas Sheridan, Plan of Education (London, 1769). Quoted in McKnight, Modern English in the Making, 376. 67 T(om) T(yers), Gentleman's Magazine LIV, 899. Quoted in Noyes, "Critical Reception", 178. 68 The Reverend James Towers, Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson (London, 1786). Quoted in Noyes, "Critical Reception", 180. 69 Johnson, "Plan", in Wilson, 127. 70 For a discussion of this feature, see Esther K. Sheldon, "Pronouncing Systems in Eighteenth-Century Dictionaries", Language, XXII (1946), 27-41, and Esther K. Sheldon, "Walker's Influence on the Pronunciation of English", PMLA, LXII (1947), 130-46. 71 William Kenrick, "Preface", A New Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1773). Quoted in Noyes, "Critical Reception of Johnson's Dictionary....", p. 185.

46

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

authority. His dictionary is clearly intended as a supplemental authority with regard to pronunciation: With respect to the etymology, explanation of words, and illustrations of idiom and phraseology, the reader will find that I have generally followed the celebrated dictionary of the learned Dr. Johnson. A s the present performance is chiefly calculated to correct and ascertain the orthoepy of our tongue, I thought it might be of some advantage to its readers, to make it at the same time a copious index to a work of very general acceptation, in which the literal authorities, collected f r o m our best writers, may be consulted at large. 71

Thomas Sheridan, too, hoped in his 1780 General Dictionary of the English Language to establish "a plain and permanent Standard of Pronunciation", and thereby halt phonological change. "The regard formerly paid to pronunciation", Sheridan declares, has been gradually declining; so that now the greatest improprieties in that point are to be found among people of fashion; many pronunciations which thirty or forty years ago were confined to the vulgar, are now gaining ground; and if something be not done to stop this growing evil, and fix a general standard at present, the English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases. 72

John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), according to Noyes "undoubtedly the most admirable and influential dictionary between Johnson and Webster",78 also acknowledged the authority of Johnson's Dictionary, which "has been deemed lawful plunder by every subsequent lexicographer".74 And Robert Nares pronounced in 1784 what might have been the last word on the authority of Johnson: At length, what many had wished, and many had attempted in vain, what seemed indeed to demand the united efforts of a number, the diligence and acuteness of a single man performed. The English Dictionary appeared; and as the weight of truth and reason is irresistible, its authority has nearly fixed the external f o r m of our language; and from its decisions few appeals have yet been m a d e . . . it is earnestly to be hoped that no author will henceforth on slight grounds, be tempted to innovate. 75

At the same time, however, some recognized the futility of attempting to halt linguistic change. Johnson had stated clearly in his Preface that he had "indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify".76 Even in the early "Plan of a Dictionary", although he had emphasized the need for stability and therefore a dictionary (perhaps in order to give more substance to his request for 72

Thomas Sheridan, "Preface", A General Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1780), n.p. English Linguistics 1500-1800, Collection of Facsimiles and Reprints 50, ed. R. C. Alston (Menston, Yorks, 1969). Herein abbreviated ELCFR. « Noyes, "Critical Reception", 186. 74 John Walker, "Preface", A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London, 1791), n.p. (Menston, Yorks, 1969), ELCFR 117. 75 Robert Nares, Elements of Orthoepy (London, 1784), 269-70 (Menston, Yorks, 1969), ELCFR 56. 76 Johnson, "Preface", 3.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: ENGLAND

47

Chesterfield's patronage), Johnson had expressed reservations. "Speech", he observed, "was not formed by an analogy sent from heaven . . . but was produced by necessity and enlarged by accident, and is therefore composed of dissimilar parts, thrown together by negligence, by affectation, by learning, or by ignorance".77 Yet, . . . w h o . . . can forbear to wish, that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firmness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter, that they might retain their substance while they alter their appearance, and be varied and compounded, yet not destroyed. But this is a privilege which words are scarcely to expect; for, like their author, when they are not gaining strength, they are generally losing it. Though art may sometimes prolong their duration, it will rarely give them perpetuity, and their changes will be almost always informing us, that language is the work of m a n . . . from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived.78 The wish to halt or retard linguistic change persisted, however. And in America, newly released from English rule but still very much under English influence, authoritarian attitudes towards language were recast into new forms.

77 78

Johnson, "Plan", in Wilson, 129. Johnson, "Plan', in Wilson, 129-30.

3 THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

3.1.

PROPOSALS FOR AN AMERICAN ACADEMY

Not surprisingly, authoritarian linguistic attitudes are readily found in American linguistic history, as well. These attitudes often are expressed as patriotic declarations of national pride; or, following the Revolution, as concern for the "purity" of the language, by those holding pro-British sentiments. Noah Webster stands as a central figure in this dispute, and his pronouncements on language, his efforts at spelling reform, and his American Dictionary of the English Language1 may serve as focal mirrors reflecting different aspects of linguistic opinion in nineteenthcentury America. Authoritarian attitudes towards language in America were mixed with the nationalistic fervor which followed the Revolution. One of the earliest examples, addressed "To the LITERATI of AMERICA", appeared in a Boston periodical in 1744: As Language, is the foundation of science, & medium of communication among mankind, it demands our first attention, and ought to be cultivated with the greatest assiduity in every seminary of learning. The English language has been greatly improved in Britain within a century, but its highest perfection, with every other branch of human knowledge, is perhaps reserved for this Land of light and freedom. As the people through this extensive country will speak English, their advantages for polishing their language will be great, and vastly superior to what the people in England ever enjoyed. I beg leave to propose a plan for perfecting the English language in America, thro 'every future period of its existence; viz. That a society for this purpose should be formed, consisting of members in each university and seminary, who shall be stiled, Fellows of the American Society of Language: That the society, when established, from time to time elect new members, & thereby be made perpetual. And that the society annually publish some observations upon the language, and from year to year, correct, enrich and refine it, until perfection stops their progress and ends their labour.2 1

Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York, 1828). "To the LITERATI of AMERICA". Reprinted in Mitford M. Mathews, The Beginnings of American English (Chicago, 1931), 40. 2

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

49

The writer notes that such a society would be easy to establish, practical, and advantageous to the advancement of science in America. He concludes: . . . It is perhaps impossible for us to form an idea of the perfection, the beauty, the grandeur, & sublimity, to which our language may arrive in the progress of time, passing through the improving tongues of our rising posterity; whose aspiring minds, fired by our example, and arbour [sic] for glory, may far surpass all the sons of science who have shown in past ages, & may light up the world with new ideas bright as the sun.3 The letter is signed, "AN AMERICAN". George Philip Krapp speculates that the author may be John Adams, 4 second president of the United States, who is the author of a proposal remarkable for its resemblance to that of Swift nearly seventy years before. With exhortations for a constituted authority to fix and purify the language widely current in England throughout the eighteenth century, it was inevitable that, following the Revolution, American emissaries and travellers to Europe would be exposed to this notion. In 1780 John Adams sent from Amsterdam a letter to the President of the Congress which proposed an "American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language". The phraseology is very nearly Swift's. Swift, however, had equated linguistic change with "corruption" and decay; he was primarily concerned with the effect of change on the durability of great writers. Adams, by contrast, is more interested in the socially unifying effect of a standard national language, along with its utility as a criterion of individual merit in a democratic society. Republics, Adams states in his letter, have in the past attained greater "purity, copiousness, and perfection of language" than other forms of government. The histories of Greece and Rome suggest, he argues, how government and language may influence each other reciprocally, as well as other aspects of the culture, and that a pure national language is fundamental to "liberty, prosperity, and glory". "Most of the nations of Europe thought it necessary to establish by public authority institutions for fixing and improving their proper languages. I need not mention the academies in France, Spain, and Italy, their learned labors, nor their great success... ." 5 Although proposals for such institutions have not been wanting, Adams continues, nothing comparable to the European institutions exists for the English language. He now echoes Chesterfield: the result is that "to this day there is no grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority; and it is only very lately, that a tolerable dictionary has been published, 3

Ibid., 40-41. See also Viola Florence Barnes, "Early Suggestion of Forming a National Language Association", American Speech IV (1929), 183-84. Miss Barnes cites the letter as evidence of the budding intercolonialism of the period. 4 George Philip Krapp, The English Language in America (New York, 1925), 6. H. L. Mencken, in his opening pages following Krapp closely, concurs with Krapp's conjecture (The American Language, 4th ed. [New York, 1936], 8). 5 "To the President of Congress" (September 5, 1780), The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles F. Adams, VII (Boston, 1852), 249.

50

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

even by a private person, [i.e., Johnson] and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual".6 The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language, I hope is reserved for Congress; they have every motive that can possibly influence a public assembly to undertake it. It will have a happy effect upon the union of the States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the language. The constitutions of all the States in the Union are so democratical that eloquence will become the instrument for recommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means of advancement through the various ranks and offices of society. 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 shall consist, the manner of appointing them, whether after the first appointment the society itself shall fill up vacancies, these and other questions will easily be determined by Congress.7 Intense patriotism and acute foresight lead Adams to predict the future international character of the English language, which is "destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age".8 America's growing importance will establish English throughout the world; it is only proper that America, therefore, set the standard of purity for that language. In discussing the project further three weeks later in a letter to a friend, Edmund Jenings, Adams' nationalism is more in evidence: I have written Congress a serious request, that they would appoint an academy for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language. After Congress shall have done it, perhaps the British king and parliament may have the honor of copying the example. This I should admire. England will never have any more honor, excepting now and then that of imitating the Americans. I assure you, Sir, I am not altogether in jest. I see a general inclination after English in France, Spain, and Holland, and it may extend throughout Europe. The population and commerce of America will force their language into general use.9 The nationalistic tenor of the linguistic attitudes of the time may also be seen in the formation by a group of young men in New York in 1788 of a Philological Society. Noah Webster was a leading spirit of this society, and published this announcement in his American Magazine for April, 1788, which echoes Adams' proposal: 6 7 8 9

"To the "To the "To the Adams,

President", President", President", The Works,

249. 249-50. 250. IX, 509.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

51

A Number of Gentlemen in this city have formed themselves into a Society, by the name of the P H I L O L O G I C A L S O C I E T Y , for the purpose o f ascertaining and improving the American Tongue. Since the separation of the American States f r o m Great-Britain, the objects of such an institution are become, in some measure, necessary, and highly important. 1 0 T h a t the Philological Society considered itself as an analogue of the

French

A c a d e m y is apparent f r o m the fact that, m a r c h i n g in black in a procession celebrating the adoption of the Constitution, the m e m b e r s carried a scroll inscribed with the principles of a F e d e r a l language. 1 1 T h i s Society exerted little o r n o influence, however, and ceased t o exist in less than a year, following W e b s t e r ' s r e m o v a l from N e w Y o r k to B o s t o n . Following the turn of the eighteenth century, anti-federalistic feeling and opinion b e c a m e dominant, and the linguistic chauvinism underlying the p r o p o s a l s for an A m e r i c a n a c a d e m y waned considerably. 1 2 A m o r e t e m p e r e d point of view, like that of the literary figure R o y a l l Tyler, saw the futility of such e n d e a v o r : T o prevent this decay, to fix some standard of language, has been the ignis fatuus of the learned in Europe. Numerous academies in the Italian states have attempted it in vain. T h e French literati, under the Bourbons, founded a national academy, the ostensible object of which was to rectify and give permanency to their language - but even under Louis the Great the attempt was in vain. People would write and talk in their own way, and even the academicians themselves rebelled individually, against those literary canons which collectively they had promulgated. Dean Swift, in England, in his celebrated letter to Lord Oxford, was pursuing the same will-o'-the-wisp; and even if this philological philosopher's stone could have been discovered, and the standard of language fixed by act of p a r l i a m e n t , . . . would it not have been left to chance to decide whether they who had fixed it had hit upon the highest grade of perfection o f which the language was capable, and might they not, by their officious intermeddling, have impeded its further progress? But, in spite of all the learned can do to fix a tower standard for language, it will be subject to perpetual variance. New discoveries will call for new terms to express novel ideas, and the public t a s t e . . . would incessantly call upon language to follow her capricious steps. 13

3.2. Nevertheless,

AUTHORITARIAN ATTITUDES AND ANGLOPHILIA

a desire for linguistic purity lingered.

Somewhat

paradoxically,

10 Quoted in Allen Walker Read, "The Philological Society of New York, 1788", American Speech IX (1934), 131. 11 The fusion of nationalistic and linguistic ideals may be seen in Webster's official report of this procession, which describes the coat of arms of the society, and 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 pendant, inscribed with the word, CONSTITUTION...." 12 Allen Walker Read, "American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech', PMLA LI (1936), 1149. 13 Royall Tyler, The Yankey in London (New York, 1809), 175-77.

52

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

authoritarian attitudes towards language shifted sides, and became mixed with pro-British feelings. These attitudes were usually manifested in pleas to preserve the purity of the language, as spoken and written in cultivated English society, from the corruption of American provincial influence. As early as 1781, the Reverend John Witherspoon had pointed to what he called, coining a term, "Americanisms, by which I understand an use of phrases or terms, or a construction of sentences, . . . different from the use of the same terms or phrases, or the construction of similar sentences in Great Britain".14 John Pickering, who was eulogized after his death as the "most distinguished philologist to which the western continent has given birth",15 published in 1816 a collection of Americanisms and "dubious expressions" entitled A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States of America. In his prefatory essay, Pickering suggested that along with matters of science and mathematics, the study of language was of first importance: The preservation of the English language in its purity throughout the United States, is an object deserving the attention of every American. . . . It is in a particular manner entitled to the consideration of the Academy [i.e., of Arts and Sciences at Boston, to whom the essay is directed], for, though subjects, which are usually ranked under the head of the physical sciences, were doubtless chiefly in view with the founders of the Academy, yet, as our language is to be the instrument of communicating to the world the speculations and discoveries of our countrymen in science and literature, it seems also necessarily "to fall within the design of that institution"; because, unless that language is well settled, and can be read with ease and satisfaction by all to whom it is addressed, our authors will write and publish, certainly under many disadvantages... 16

The major disadvantage of this unsettled state of the language, Pickering continues, would be that American authors would not be easily understood by English readers. Conversely, the classics of English literature will be lost to Americans. "Let us then for a moment imagine the time to have arrived, when Americans shall no longer be able to understand the works of Milton, Pope, Swift, Addison, and other English authors, justly styled classic, without the aid of a translation into a language, that is to be called at some future day the American tongue!"17 Pickering contends that it is clear that in certain instances American speech has deviated from the standard of the language, i.e., contemporary British speech; these "corruptions" have become the "subject of much animadversion and regret with the learned of Great Britain".18 He quotes excerpts of such animadversion from British reviews of American books, and argues that by not following the example of the 14

John Witherspoon, "The Druid", No. 5, The Pennsylvania Journal (May 9, 1781). Re-

printed in Mathews, Beginnings 15

of American

English,

17.

Mathews, Beginnings, 64.

10 John Pickering, A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States of America (Boston, 1816). Reprinted in Mathews, Beginnings of American English, 65.

17 18

In Mathews, Beginnings, 66. In Mathews, Beginnings, 67.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

53

best British authors, Americans are corrupting the purity of the English language. This is not to deny that language changes, says Pickering. New words must be added. "We, as members of that great community or family which speaks the English language, have undoubtedly... a right to make words and to propose them for adoption into our common language. But unless those, who are the final arbiters in the case, that is, the body of the learned and polite of this whole community, wherever they may be, shall sanction such new terms, it will be presumptuous in the authors of them to attempt to force them into general use." 19 His Vocabulary, therefore, includes not only words of American origin, but "all words, the legitimacy of which had been questioned, in order that their claim to a place in the language might be discussed and settled".20 Pickering's standard of usage is that of cultivated London society; any deviation from that he adjudges a corruption. He deprecates linguistic reformers who are contributing to the decay of English: "In this country, as in England, we have thirsty reformers and presumptuous sciolists, who would unsettle the whole of our admirable language, for the purpose of making it conform to their whimsical notions of propriety." Pickering's barb is aimed at Noah Webster, whose attempts at spelling reform had stirred up a linguistic controversy and received bitter commentary. Webster had refrained from answering most of the invective directed against him by both American and British reviewers, but to Pickering, who was the son of his friend Timothy Pickering, he felt compelled to reply in a sixty-four page pamphlet. "When I first read your Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases...", Webster wrote, "I found in it many things which appeared to deserve animadversion, and thought it incumbent on me, whose Dictionary you have often cited, to publish some remarks upon particular parts of it.. . ," 21 Webster set out to correct Pickering's views on the American corruption of the English language, adverting only briefly to the oblique personal reference. "Sciolists we may have in multitudes", he countered: But w h o are the m e n w h o w o u l d unsettle the w h o l e of our language? . . . It certainly b e c o m e s y o u to learn the distinction between an attempt t o find what the language is, and an attempt to unsettle its principles. Whether y o u number m e with the thirsty reformers and sciolists is a fact w h i c h I shall take n o pains to discover, nor, if known, would the fact give m e the smallest concern. M y studies have b e e n sometimes directed 19

In Mathews, Beginnings, 74. In Mathews, Beginnings, 73. The position elaborated in Pickering's Essay was reinforced by an article by Theodoric Romeyn Beck read March 18, 1829, before the Albany Institute, a scientific society, entitled "Notes on Mr. Pickering's Vocabulary of Words and Phrases, which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States". Beck, a physician and teacher, amplified some of Pickering's commentary on specific usages. "The standard writers of a language", he states, "are, like the guardians of a well-ordered state, its preservers from anarchy and revolution." (Reprinted in Mathews, Beginnings, 78-79. 21 Noah Webster, A Letter to the Honorable John Pickering (Boston, 1817). Reprinted in Harry R. Warfei, ed., Letters of Noah Webster (New York, 1953), 341-42. 20

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THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

to philology for the exclusive purpose of ascertaining and unfolding its principles, correcting abuses, and supplying the defect of rules in our elementary treatises. In the course of my researches I have discovered a multitude of errors and false principles, and numerous defects in such treatises; and as I have pushed my inquiries probably much farther than any other man, I am satisfied that the evidence I can lay before the public will convince you that there is a rich mine of knowledge to be opened on this subject that your English friends have never yet discovered.22 The errors arising out of ignorance of the true principles of the language have been so widespread, even among scholars like Johnson and Lowth, says Webster, that the very foundations of their authority must be challenged. And the right of any individual to legislate the usage of others, as Pickering is attempting to do with this collection, is alien to Webster's patriotic republican convictions: The man who undertakes to censure others for the use of certain words and to decide what is or is not correct in language seems to arrogate to himself a dictatorial authority, the legitimacy of which will always be denied. The critic or reviewer seems not to consider that in the great Republic of Letters thousands of men may be found who understand the subject as well as himself or better, and such men spurn the control which another attempts to assume over their opinions and practice. Very few men are competent to decide upon what is national practice and still fewer upon what is radically correct in language. Even men of the most erudition are rarely qualified for these purposes... .2S Furthermore, says Webster, Pickering's desire to fix the language is unrealistic and impractical. "The process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current."24 To stem the current is both undesirable, and beyond human means, whether it be attempted by one man or a group of men: . . . There is and there can be no tribunal of competent jurisdiction for this purpose. Nor is it necessary or useful that there should be. Analogy, custom, and habit form a better rule to guide men in the use of words, than any tribunal of men, voluntarily or arbitrarily instituted. The force of analogy every man must know and f e e l . . . . It is to the force of these principles we are indebted for all the regularity and permanency which a language enjoys.25 To argue, as Pickering does, for fixing the language in its present state assumes "that the language has arrived to its ne plus of perfection, that it is incapable of improvement, and that it is our duty to limit its progress. On no other hypothesis can an attempt to fix it in its present state be vindicated."26 But this is to fix the limits of knowledge and future discoveries, which is obviously absurd. The very notion of a fixed standard of language, Webster states, is in itself impossible. As for Pickering's caveat that the time will come when Americans will no longer be 22 23 24 25 2e

Letters, Letters, Letters, Letters, Letters,

372. 367. 369. 367-68. 387.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

55

able to read the works of Milton, Pope, Swift, and Addison without a translation, it is Webster the linguistic patriot who answers: [That].. . would certainly be a great misfortune. Were it not for my personal respect for you, I might oppose to this supposition another, which is nearly as probable, that the rivers in America will turn their courses and flow from the sea to the tops of the hills. . . . If such an event should take place, the people of this country must learn English and read the English authors as we do Livy and Caesar. One thing is very certain: the works of Milton, Pope, and Addison will be read by Americans till our descendants divest themselves of their leading strings, grow up to manhood in intellectual vigor, and write books that they like better.27 Johnson's metaphor for the relentlessness of linguistic change was "the intumescence of the tide"; Webster's, "the motion of a broad river . . . with a slow, silent, irresistible current". Webster's rebuttal to Pickering is of particular interest because, in a sense, he could just as well have addressed these remarks to himself. Nearly twenty years earlier, Webster had published a series of lectures under the title of Dissertations on the English Language, which outlined a theory of language in some respects not unlike that of Pickering and other eighteenth-century figures. On the other hand, Webster's theories anticipate in part the modern doctrine of usage held by linguists today. Indeed, while Webster's name has in this country become synonymous with the Dictionary, and with Linguistic Authority, the development of his ideas about language may be taken to symbolize the movement of American scholars away from authoritarian attitudes towards a more democratic and scientific point of view.

3.3.

NOAH WEBSTER'S LINGUISTIC PATRIOTISM

Like Samuel Johnson and other English thinkers on language, Webster believed as a young man that the English language had reached a state of classical perfection during the reigns in England of Elizabeth and Anne, as attested by the writings of masters like Sidney, Addison, Swift, and their contemporaries. "In the infancy of rude states", he wrote in the Connecticut Journal in 1784: Language must be exceedingly imperfect - it must be changing and refining as civilization proceeds, till it arrives to a certain point of perfection. Here it will remain unless a prevailing preference for another language, or some revolution in the state, expose it to variation. Both these causes concurred to corrupt and finally to destroy the language of the Augustan A g e . . . ,28 Had the language been fixed at that time, Webster noted five years later in the Dissertations, "it would have been fortunate . . . [for] few improvements have been 27

28

Letters, 386.

Noah Webster, "To the Printers" (July 22, 1784). Printed in the Connecticut Journal (New Haven), December 15, 1784; in Letters, 12-13.

56

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

made since that time. . . ." 2e The language has continued to change, however, and numerous corruptions have been assimilated into the language. Webster's position here seems at first glance to resemble that of Pickering. The "corruptions" each refers to, however, are quite opposed to one another. Pickering's objections were for the most part to terms particularly American, usages distinct from those of polite British society. Webster's criterion of judgment is different. The usage of polite British society repels him in this period immediately following the Revolution, and his nationalism compels him to argue for an American standard of language. The already decaying language of the old nation, Webster argues, should not be held as the standard for the new nation rising toward a glorious destiny. The language bequeathed to the descendants of British ancestors must now answer to new purposes. The distance between the two nations will enhance language differences as time passes, and an American language will be the inevitable result: . . . Several circumstances render a future separation of the American tongue from the English, necessary and unavoidable. The vicinity of the European nations, with the uninterrupted communication in peace, and the changes of dominion in war, are gradually assimilating their respective languages. The English with others is suffering continual alterations. America, placed at a distance from those nations, will feel, in a much less degree, the influence of the assimilating causes; at the time, numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and science, and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a language in North America, as different from the future language of England, as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another... . 30

Webster's linguistic nationalism is transparently clear; he is, in fact, a focal point in the controversy between the patriots and the Anglophiles.31 He saw the need for a unifying force for the federal republic, and felt that a uniform American tongue would fill that need. As he wrote to Timothy Pickering, John's father, "a national language is a national tie, and what country wants it more than America?" 32 Sectional differences of dialect, if allowed to persist with no national standard, will corrupt the language, and lead to political disharmony. However, with the establishment of a national standard, and the isolation of the United States from the more violent causes of linguistic change such as conquest, the American language 29

Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language (1789), ELCFR 54, ed. R. C. Alston (Menston, Yorks, 1967), 30.

30

31

Webster, Dissertations,

22-23.

Harry R. Warfel, Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America (New York, 1936), 190. That feelings of national pride were influencing linguistic attitudes is evident from the following statement, signed "Sylvius", in American Museum II (August, 1787), 118: "In most cases, a national language answers the purpose of distinction: but we have the misfortune of speaking the same language with a nation, who, of all people in Europe, have given, and continue to give us fewest proofs of love." 32 Noah Webster, "To Timothy Pickering" (May 25, 1786). Letters, 52.

57

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

can flourish, and "our amor patriae acquire strength and inspire us with a suitable respect for our own national character".33 We have therefore the fairest opportunity of establishing a national language, and of giving it uniformity and perspicuity, in North America, that ever presented itself to mankind. Now is the time to begin the plan. The minds of the Americans are roused by the events of a revolution; the necessity of organizing the political body and of forming constitutions of government that shall secure freedom and property, has called all the faculties of mind into exertion; and the danger of losing the benefits of independence, has disposed every man to embrace any scheme that shall tend, in its future operation, to reconcile the people of America to each other, and weaken the prejudices which oppose a cordial union.34

3.4.

SPELLING

REFORM

Webster's zeal for a national standard was manifested initially in his proposals for spelling reform. Such reforms, to provide for a phonetically consistent orthography, would require, as he wrote to Benjamin Franklin, reducing the alphabet "to perfect regularity",35 with the addition or reformation of certain characters, and the assignment of one and only one specific sound to each character. It would then be possible to achieve precision in the written representation of English sounds. Franklin had formulated a similar plan nearly twenty years earlier, casting the type necessary to print words in his alphabet, but the scheme was never put into public use. 38 When Webster sent Franklin a copy of his Dissertations on the English Language, which he had dedicated to "that illustrious defender of American freedom", 37 Franklin responded with encouragement for the plan. "I cannot but applaud your zeal", he wrote, "for preserving the Purity of our Language, both in its Expression and Pronunciation, and in correcting the popular errors several of our states are continually falling into with respect to both." 38 It is apparent that Webster had been forming this scheme for several years. He had written to Timothy Pickering in 1785: "I have begun a reformation in the Language and my plan is yet but in embryo." 39 In addition to Franklin, Webster had sketched his proposal to David Ramsay, the chairman of Congress, and to George Washington, who, he told Franklin, "has expressed the warmest wishes for the success of my undertaking to refine the language... ." 40 33

Webster, Dissertations, 36. Webster, Dissertations, 36. :, ·> N o a h Webster, "To Benjamin Franklin" (May 24, 1786). Letters, 50. 39 Krapp, The English Language in America, 329. Webster, Dissertations, p. vi. 38 Benjamin Franklin, "To N o a h Webster" (December 26, 1789), The Writings Franklin, ed. A . H. Smyth, X ( N e w York, 1907), 75. 39 N o a h Webster, "To Timothy Pickering" (October 28, 1785). Letters, 38. 40 Webster, "To Benjamin Franklin." Letters, 50. 34

of

Benjamin

58

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

In an Appendix to the Dissertations, Webster unfolded his arguments for reform within the context of a plea for national unity: Ought the Americans to retain these faults which produce unnumerable inconveniences in the acquisition and use of the language, or ought they at once to reform these abuses, and introduce order and regularity into the orthography of the AMERICAN TONGUE? . . . The advantages to be derived from these alterations are numerous, great and permanent. . . . A capital advantage of this reform in these States would be, that it would make a difference between the English orthography and the American.... I am confident that such an event is an object of vast political consequence. For the alteration, however small, would encourage the publication of books in this country. It would render it, in some measure, necessary that all books should be printed in America.... A national language is a bond of national union.. .. Let us, then, seize the present moment and establish a national language as well as a national government.41 The "numerous, great and permanent advantages" which Webster listed reveal his patriotic motivations, and his concern for the state of literacy in the republic. The new orthography would simplify the learning of the language for both children and foreigners, making it inevitable that they would spell and pronounce correctly. It would follow from his system, thought Webster, that pronunciation would also be fixed. "Such a uniformity in these states is very desireable [sic]; it would remove prejudice, and conciliate mutual affection and respect." 4 2 The number of letters, and therefore printed pages, would be reduced by about one-eighteenth, thus effecting a saving; and more important, publication of books in America, a matter of some political consequence, would be thus rendered a necessity. The nation would be compelled to draw away from English literary influence, and develop a native literary tradition. As we have seen in his response to John Pickering, however, Webster intuitively recognized the inherent futility of attempting to legislate matters of language, and the power of usage in establishing the acceptability of forms. "The general practice of a nation is the rule of propriety", he writes in the Dissertations, "and this practice should at least be consulted in so important a matter, as that of laws for speaking." 4 3 However, Webster was not prepared to accept usage as the sole determiner of correctness. Rather he tried to discover the formative principle behind usage, underlying language itself, and thereby establish a linguistic norm. Like other eighteenth-century thinkers, he saw analogy as the ordered, logical principle, and argued that for any disputable point, analogy must decide the issue. By the same token, Webster defined corruptions in language as deviations f r o m the rules of analogy. Since usage, in its local variations, exhibited diversity, the principle of analogy must therefore provide the elusive standard of correctness in language: 41

Noah Webster, "An Essay On the Necessity, Advantages and Practicability of Reforming the MODE of SPELLING, and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to the Pronunciation", in Dissertations, 393-406, passim. 42 Dissertations, 397. 43 Dissertations, 24.

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

59

If a standard cannot be fixed on local and variable custom, on what shall it be fixed? If the most eminent speakers are not to direct our practice, where shall we look for a guide? The answer is extremely easy; the rules of the language itself, and the general practice of the nation, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examine the structure of any language, we shall find a certain principle of analogy running through the whole. . . . These principles of analogy were not the result of design - they must have been the effect of accident, or that tendency which all men feel towards uniformity. But the principles, when established, are productive of great convenience, and become an authority superior to the arbitrary decisions of any man or class of men. 4 4 The principles of this linguistic norm thus transcend the usage of individual men. However, Webster is compelled to add: "There is one exception only to this remark: W h e n a deviation from analogy has b e c o m e the universal practice of a nation, it then takes the place of all rules and b e c o m e s the standard of propriety." 4 5 On the basis of analogy, combined with etymological information which was often in error, 40 Webster recommended a number of spellings using the conventional alphabet. H e published in 1 7 9 0 A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, in which silent letters were dropped, and "regularized" spellings such as waz, breth, wurd, and tung were presented. "Every possible reezon", Webster wrote, "that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that w e are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors." 4 7 This proposal w a s publicly

u

Dissertations, 27-28. Dissertations, 28. 46 Webster's etymologizing has received considerable comment. Webster compared root words from some twenty languages attempting to establish relationships between them, and derive the principles on which they were formed. He accepted the Biblical account of the confusion of tongues at Babel, and inferred the existence of a single primitive language, "Chaldee", or Biblical Aramaic. While Warfel portrays this research as a delightful game (Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, 307-08), it is clear that with the exception of Home Tooke's somewhat dubious theories, Webster was unacquainted with contemporary philological studies such as those of Sir William Jones. Stewart A. Steger calls the etymologies "practically valueless" (American Dictionaries [Baltimore, 1913], 51). Sir James Murray more pointedly charges that Webster "had the notion that derivations can be elaborated from one's own consciousness" (Evolution of English Lexicography [London, 1900], 43). Krapp qualifies Murray's view somewhat, giving Webster credit for concentrated although misdirected investigation, concluding, however, that "it was really spiritual, not phonological truth in which Webster was primarily interested" (The English Language in America, 365). Mitford Mathews is even more charitable; he states: "Far more of Webster's etymologies were correct than those of any lexicographer who had preceded him. He made many mistakes, but he got many things right." (A Survey of English Dictionaries, [Chicago, 1933], 42). Allen Walker Read's essay, "The Spread of German Linguistic Learning in New England During the Lifetime of Noah Webster", (American Speech XLI [1967], 163-81), affords a clear perspective: While Webster was "America's first comparative philologist", he was, in 1825, "oblivious to the new scholarship" of Humboldt, Bopp, Grimm, Rask and others: "Noah Webster had made important advances by careful but uninspired research, and it was his misfortune to be superseded even as his masterpiece of 1828 was being seen through the press" (181). 45

47

Noah Webster, A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings (1790). Quoted in Krapp, The English Language in America, 334.

60

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

derided, however, even by Webster's friends, and he abandoned the scheme. "Reezon" could not carry the day. Although these proposals never achieved any currency, Webster was nevertheless one of the most influential commentators on American English. As Krapp suggests, Webster's optimism for the success of his proposals for a "fiat language" is "characteristic of the pathetic faith of men in the early days of the American republic in the power of government to cure all the evils of life by edict and decree".48 Yielding to the practical consideration of a favorable public reception, Webster did not utilize either the phonetic alphabet or his more phonetic spellings in the various editions of his spelling books,49 nor in his dictionaries. He did not, however, abandon his hope of simplifying and regularizing American spelling. The spelling book and the dictionaries did have some effect as they filled the need for a standard, and are one example of linguistic authority exerting a real and durable effect on at least one aspect of the written language. Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806, In the Preface to that work, he has modified considerably his position on orthography. "The orthography of our language", he states, is extremely irregular and many fruitless attempts have been made to reform it. The utility and expedience of such reform has been controverted, and both sides of the question have been maintained with no inconsiderable zeal. On this subject, as on most others which divide the opinions of men, parties seem to have erred by running into extremes. The friends of reform maintain that our alphabet should be rendered perfectly regular, by rejecting superfluous characters, and introducing new ones to supply defects; so that every sound may be represented by a single letter, and no letter have more sounds than one. This scheme is impracticable, and not at all necessary. 50

Those opposed to such reform, Webster continues, do so on the grounds that etymological roots would be lost, old writings would be rendered unreadable, and tremendous inconvenience would result. But this is to argue for fixed spellings in the face of linguistic change, and therefore reinforce the inconsistency with which letters represent sounds: "Every man of common reading knows that a living language must necessarily suffer gradual changes in its current words, in the significations of many words, and in pronunciation. The unavoidable consequences of fixing the orthography of the living language, is to destroy the use of the alphabet... ."51 Seventeen years after the Dissertations, Webster can no longer 48

Krapp, The English Language in America, 332. Webster's speller was first published as Part I of his Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Comprising An easy, concise, and systematic Method of Education, Designed for the Use of English Schools in America (Hartford, 1783). In 1788, it was republished under the title American Spelling Book; and in 1829, with spellings brought into conformance with the Dictionary of 1828, the title was changed to The Elementary Spelling Book. See Warfel, Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, 67-68. 50 Noah Webster, "Preface", A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (New Haven, 1806), p. vi. 51 Webster, "Preface", p. vi. 49

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

61

insist that "a correct orthography would render the pronunciation of the language, as uniform as the spelling in books". 52 He now recognizes, it seems, a fundamental fact of the nature of language, that the sounds of a language will have priority over their written representations; accordingly, he leavens his view: The correct principle regarding changes in orthography seems to be to lie between these extremes of opinion. No great changes should ever be made at once, nor should any change be made which violates established principles, creates inconvenience, or obliterates the radicals of the language. But gradual changes to accommodate the written to the spoken language, when they occasion none of these evils, and specially when they purify words from corruptions, improve the regular analogies of a language and illustrate etymology, are not only proper, but indispensable.53 As before, analogy supplies the principle for orthographic regularization, but now the regularization is viewed as a continuing process, rather than as accomplished by a single final dictum, effective for all time. Regarding the sounds of words, Webster states, "The more I reflect upon the subject, the more I am convinced that a living language admits of no fixed state, nor of any certain standard of pronunciation by which even the learned in general will consent to be governed."54 Applying principles of analogy and simplification, Webster introduces in this dictionary a number of spellings new to lexicography. The -our ending of words like honour and colour is changed to -or. Webster drops the k from words like logick, physick, and musick, but retains it for stressed monosyllables. The -re of theatre, centre, and metre becomes -er, and the c in defence, offence, etc., is 52

Webster, "Preface", p. vi. Webster, "Preface", p. vi. The reasoned moderation of Webster's discourse is in sharp contrast to the public reactions to his proposals, particularly as manifested in the popular press. The Philadelphia Aurora in 1800 ridiculed Webster's plan "to new model the spelling, by a capricious but utterly incompetent attempt of his own weak conception". T h e Gazette of the United States (June 12, 1800) printed counterfeit letters parodying the style of the "nue Merrykin Dikshunary". The assistant editor of the New England Palladium, Warren Dutton, attacked the "vulgar pronunciation of a dictionary that would include domestic authorities: " . . . In what can a Columbian dictionary differ f r o m a n English one, but in . . . barbarisms? W h o are the Columbian authors who do not write in the English language and spell in the English manner except N o a h Webster, junior, Esq.? . . . But, if he will persist, in spite of c o m m o n sense, to furnish us with a dictionary which we do not want, in return for his generosity I will furnish him with a title for it. Let, then, the projected volume of foul and unclean things bear his own christian name and be called N O A H ' S A R K . " (Quoted in Warfel, Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, 294-94. See also Bergen Evans, " N o a h Webster H a d the Same Troubles", New York Times Magazine, May 13, 1962, 11, 77, 79-80.) Lyman Cobb published a pamphlet, A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of Books (New York, 1831), which detailed in fine print every inconsistency in Webster's spellers and dictionaries (e.g., mastif, plaintif, but distaff; defense, but fence; etc.). Edward S. Gould printed a devastating essay in Democratic Review (March, 1856), which William Cullen Bryant reprinted in the Evening Post, with the warning that "the English language has been undergoing a process of corruption for the last quarter of a century". Bryant stated that he would be willing to contribute to a f u n d to have Gould's essay "read twice a year in every schoolhouse in the United States, until every trace of Websterian spelling disappears f r o m the land". (See Mencken, 386-87). 53

54

Webster, "Preface", p. xi.

62

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

replaced with s. With other changes, these have all been adopted into general American practice. Still other changes, such as hed, giv, bilt, croud, lether, thum, and many more, have not been accepted, and appeared only in the 1806 dictionary.55 For his revision published in 1840, Webster himself changed the spelling of gimblet, Hand, nusance, wo, and others.56

3.5.

WEBSTER'S I N F L U E N C E ON AMERICAN SPELLING

The question of Webster's influence, then, must be seen in perspective. It is clear that Webster did provide for millions of people an authoritative standard for spelling with his speller and dictionary. Certain changes which are the basis for present-day differences between British and American practice were effected,57 particularly in the four classes represented above {honor, music, center, defense). Regarding these innovations, however, there is evidence that in many cases the forms which Webster chose to include were already current, such as the -or ending,58 which Johnson had rejected nearly fifty years before. Webster himself claims the precedent of usage in the 1806 Preface, stating, "In omitting u in honor and a few words of that class I have pursued a common practice in this country authorized by the principle of uniformity and by etymology.... In omitting k after c I have unequivocal propriety and the present usage for my authorities."59 In a letter to the English lexicographer Charles Richardson in 1837, referring to a prospectus for Richardson's dictionary, Webster asks, "Who wants to see the old orthography, errour, ambassadour, governour, civick, musick, publick, which has been obsolete in most writings for more than half a century?"60 Webster's lexicographic rival, Joseph Worcester, observes in his 1830 Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language that with regard to omitting the u in -our endings, "the tendency to its exclusion has long been gaining strength, yet its omission is far from having become so general as that of the k".61 Clearly, it is easy to overestimate the influence of the lexicographer. By taking sides in a matter of divided orthographic usage, perhaps he tilted the scales in favor of a form already gaining currency. In addition, many of Webster's changes were in very common words; their frequency of use in print would tend, therefore, to 55

Mencken, 384. Mathews, A Survey of English Dictionaries, 43. 57 Kemp Μ alone, "A Linguistic Patriot", American Speech I (1925), 29. 58 Steger, 45. 59 Webster, "Preface", p. xx. Webster's omission of k is not original with him; the forms logic, rhetoric, and music are to be found in Benjamin Martin's dictionary published in 1749, the Lingua Brittanica Reformata. See Starnes and Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, 151. «» Noah Webster, "To Charles Richardson" (1837), Letters, 463. 81 Joseph E. Worcester, "Preface", A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, 1830), p. xvi. 56

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

63

62

magnify the significance of these changes. Other pre-Websterian precedents in usage have been demonstrated, which suggest that many of the objections lodged against the American lexicographer have their basis in extralinguistic matters, such as the preference for British over American manners and mores.83 A more balanced assessment of Webster's influence on American orthography, then, would give him some credit for settling a number of points of divided usage, but would hesitate to attribute to him very much greater shaping influence on the language.

3.6.

WEBSTER'S AMERICAN DICTIONARY

Webster's great life work was the two volume quarto 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the "most significant contribution to the growth of English lexicography between Dr. Johnson and the appearance of the first volume of the New English Dictionary",64 It is striking to remark how, as with Johnson, the nearly constant study of twenty years has tempered his views. Though still the patriot, Webster's linguistic nationalism is far less obtrusive in 1828. The temper of the times has changed, and the political need for a Federal English is no longer as sharply felt: as Shoemaker puts it, "The spread-eagle doctrine was on the wane."85 Yet, Webster's use of the word American in the title is significant, undoubtedly reflecting the matured national pride of the ardent young author of the Dissertations.ββ In that earlier work, he had discoursed on "a language in North America, as different from the future language of England, as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German";87 in the 1807 school abridgment of the Compendious Dictionary, he again insisted on the fact that "two nations proceeding from the same ancestors cannot long preserve a perfect sameness of language".88 From these arguments follows the need for a dictionary recording American usage: It is not only important, but in a degree necessary, that the people of this country should have an American Dictionary of the English Language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences will e x i s t . . . . A great number of words in our language require to be defined in a phraseology accommodated to the condition and institutions of the people 62

Mathews, A Survey of English Dictionaries, 43. To argue, as Thomas Pyles does, that the lexicographer can arbitrarily alter phonetic patterns is certainly to overstate the case. Pyles, in Words and Ways of American English (New York, 1952), states that if subsequent editions of the Dictionary had continued to recommend Webster's preferred pronunciation "wownd" for wound (n.), that pronunciation would have been adopted, "such is the supreme confidence of our people in the authority of the lexicographer" (118). 63 See Thomas R. Lounsbury, English Spelling and Spelling Reform (New York, 1909), 229. 84 Krapp, The English Language in America, 362. 05 Irvin C. Shoemaker, Noah Webster, Pioneer of Learning (New York, 1936), 252. ββ Steger, 40. 67 Webster, Dissertations, 23. 68 Noah Webster, "Preface", A Dictionary of the English Language Compiled for the Use of Common Schools (New York, 1807), p. iii.

64

THE AUTHORITARIAN TRADITION IN LANGUAGE: AMERICA

in these states, and the people of England must look to an American Dictionary for a correct understanding of such terms.... The necessity therefore of a Dictionary suited to the people of the United States is obvious; and I suppose that this fact being admitted, there could be no difference of opinion as to the time when such a work ought to be substituted for English Dictionaries.69

A certain national pride also was exhibited in Webster's use of American writers as authorities for American usage. Adverting to Johnson's statement that "the chief glory of a nation arises from its authors", Webster confesses: With this opinion deeply impressed on my mind, I have the same ambition which actuated that great man when he expressed a wish to give celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. I do not, indeed, expect to add celebrity to the names of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay, Marshall,.. . Trumbull,... Irving, and many other Americans distinguished by their writings or by their science; but it is with pride and satisfaction that I can place them, as authorities, on the same page with those of Boyle, Hooker, Milton, Dryden, Addison. . . .70

Yet as early as 1824, while in England to complete the American Dictionary, Webster was moved to accentuate likenesses rather than differences. He wrote to Samuel Lee: "The English language is the language of the United States; and it is desirable that as far as the people have the same things and the same ideas, the words to express them should remain the same."71 And in 1841, when he presented a copy of his revised edition of the American Dictionary to Queen Victoria, his linguistic passion could now encompass England as well. Writing to Andrew Stevenson, who forwarded the dictionary to Lord Melbourne, who in turn presented the copy to the Queen, Webster could state: "Our common language is one of the ties that binds the two nations together; & I hope the work I have executed will manifest to the British nation that the Americans are not willing to suffer it to degenerate on this side of the Atlantic."72 The assertion made by Sledd and Kolb, then, that Webster "too often . . . entangled himself in chauvinistic absurdities, as when he suggested that the golden age of English was past in Britain but future in America",78 requires qualification; it is valid for the younger Webster of the Dissertations, but is unfair in the light of the lexicographer's later statements. Webster recognized the inevitability of linguistic change, and the power of usage, the "general practice of a nation". But for him it did not follow that language could not be modified by the reason to conform to principles of reason. When the assistant editor of the New England Palladium, Warren Dutton, attacked the proposed 1806 dictionary on the grounds that it would corrupt the language, since "the vulgar provincialisms of uneducated Americans are to be quoted as authorities for e

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