Founding Grammars (6 page)

In June 1787 the twenty-eight-year-old Webster gained another reason for wanting a steady income. He became engaged to a young Bostonian woman named Rebecca Greenleaf and needed money to marry on. Webster stayed in Philadelphia just long enough to shepherd a revised edition of his spelling book through the press and to write an essay explaining the principles of the new federal Constitution, signed “a citizen of America.” Then he moved to New York City to found a monthly journal titled
The American Magazine.
He hoped journalism would prove more profitable than grammar.

Webster's journal published an ambitious mix of political, scientific, and literary writing, including poems by Webster's friend Joel Barlow and others. The title page displayed the magazine's forward-looking motto, “Science the guide, and truth the eternal goal.” He also found time to start a Philological Society, dedicated to the study of American English. (
Philology
was the usual eighteenth-century term for language study, from the Greek for “love of language.”) Webster occasionally read essays before the Society and was able to persuade them to recommend his speller, although they balked at approving the more unorthodox grammar.

Unfortunately,
The American Magazine
never caught on with the general public. Webster lost money on it and was forced to suspend publication after less than a year. At the end of 1788, Webster left New York. He continued his usual round of business travel for several more months, while Rebecca waited at her family home in Boston. Eventually he settled once again in Hartford for another try at the law. Gradually he started to build a practice.

On the strength of a generous $1,000 gift from his future brother-in-law James Greenleaf, a prosperous merchant, Webster felt financially stable enough to marry Rebecca. They wed on October 26, 1789, shortly after his thirty-first birthday. He wrote in his diary, “I am united to an amiable woman, and if I am not happy, shall be much disappointed.” Although Webster would continue to face obstacles in his career, from now on his family life would be a source of comfort and consolation.

A few months before Webster married, he brought out his lecture series in the form of a book titled
Dissertations on the English Language,
which he had printed in Boston. Webster's challenge to Latin-based grammars is more forcefully stated here than in the
Institute.
In the book's preface, he writes dismissively, “Our modern grammars have done much more hurt than good. The authors have labored to prove, what is obviously absurd, viz. that our language is not made right; and in pursuance of this idea, have tried to make it over again, and persuade the English to speak by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own.” He goes on to attack Lowth by name, saying, “Very few of the alterations recommended by Lowth and his followers can be vindicated on any better principle than some Latin rule or his own private opinion.”
37

Between the first edition of
A Grammatical Institute
and the publication of
Dissertations,
Webster's anti-Latin bias received strong reinforcement from a 1786 book by an English radical politician and language scholar named John Horne Tooke. Horne Tooke's book, ponderously titled
Winged Words, or The Diversions of Purley,
is a forcefully argued attempt to prove that all English words derive from a small set of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) nouns and verbs. Later linguistic discoveries would show that Horne Tooke's analysis of English was mostly wrong, but when his work first appeared, it captured the imagination of Webster and many others. Horne Tooke was well known in America for his vocal defense of the American Revolution, which might have further influenced Webster in his favor.

Webster uses Horne Tooke's theories to buttress his arguments against basing English grammar on Latin. For instance, he argues that typical verb classifications, such as those in Bishop Lowth's grammar book, are inaccurate because they are influenced by Latin. Lowth (and most grammarians) assumed a future tense for English. Webster points out that, while Latin verbs are marked for future tense with a special ending, English verbs have no such form. They simply combine present-tense verbs with
shall
or
will
for a “future” meaning. After providing several examples of this sort, he concludes, “It is astonishing to see how long and how stupidly English grammarians have followed the Latin grammars.”
38

Dissertations
argues for the same constructions that Webster had been promoting to his lecture audiences, but now he fleshes out his arguments with etymological evidence. He writes, “
Who did you speak to? Who did he marry?
are challenged as bad English, but
whom did you speak to
was never used in speaking …
who
in the Gothic or Teutonic has always answered to the Latin nominative
qui,
the dative
cui,
… and the ablative
quo
 … So that
who did he speak to? who did you go with?
were probably as good English in ancient times as
cui dixit?
” It's more than probable, in Webster's opinion, that “
who
was once wholly used in asking questions, even in the objective case … until some Latin student began to suspect it [of being] bad English because not agreeable to the Latin rules.”
39

Webster was not always consistent in his views. In spite of his belief that the most common usage should determine what was standard, he did have pet peeves. He complained, for instance, that speakers didn't understand how to use
shall
properly and were increasingly replacing it with
will.
He also thought upper-class New England pronunciations sounded more educated than those of other regions. He urged Americans in other parts of the country to abandon their own local dialects and adopt New England speech in the interests of a uniform national language.

Webster wrote in his preface that he hoped
Dissertations
would be useful to “all classes of readers,” but the book was too esoteric to have wide appeal. Besides the original material of his lectures, Webster included essays on topics that had recently caught his interest. These included a proposal for spelling reform and a section demonstrating Horne Tooke's method of deriving prepositions, conjunctions, and other parts of speech from ancient Saxon verbs. Such abstruse topics made the book heavy going for readers who were simply hoping to improve their grammar skills. Although
Dissertations
added to Webster's stature as an expert on language, it was not successful as a practical grammar guide.

Webster lost $400 on the publication of
Dissertations,
a hefty sum at that time. Many workingmen earned less than half that in a year. In 1791 he wrote wryly to Timothy Pickering, “My dissertations, which cost me a large sum of money, lie on hand and must, I believe, be sold for wrapping paper.”
40
Earlier, Webster's brother-in-law Nathaniel Appleton had tried to reassure him by writing, “The work has, undoubtedly, merit, and the next generation will acknowledge it.”
41
But Webster was far more than one generation ahead of his time. Several decades would pass before a group of grammarians made another attempt to inject more natural usage standards into American grammar books, and nearly a century would pass before linguists began challenging the very notion of prescriptive grammars.

Dissertations on the English Language
would be Webster's last linguistic publication for the next seventeen years. Meanwhile, his writings in support of the Constitution and a strong federal government led to a new opportunity. In 1793 a group of Federalists, including Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, approached Webster about starting a Federalist journal in New York City. They wanted to counteract anti-Federalist newspapers such as the Philadelphia
Aurora,
which was publishing vitriolic attacks on President Washington. To get the project started, each man in the group gave Webster a no-interest loan of $150 on the condition of being repaid in five years.

The new project would give Webster a powerful platform for his political views. It would also give his income a much-needed boost, allowing him to pay off his debts. In October Webster moved his family, which now included two small daughters, from Hartford to New York. On December 9 he published the first issue of his journal,
The American Minerva.
Beneath the title was the motto “Patroness of Peace, Commerce and the Liberal Arts.” The
Minerva
would prove to be a success. Webster now committed himself to public affairs. For the first few years, until he could afford an assistant, he worked long, arduous hours producing all the paper's editorial content himself. This heavy schedule left little time for other writing.

Although the speller remained popular, Webster's grammar books soon sank into obscurity. His famous dictionary was decades in the future. In the meantime, a rival grammarian was about to publish the book that would sweep all others off the market.

 

2.

Grammar for Different Classes of Learners

While Noah Webster was in New York laboring in the Federalist cause, an expatriate named Lindley Murray who lived several thousand miles away in old York, England, was beginning work on his own version of an English grammar book. In many ways Murray was the antithesis of Webster. He didn't write the book to express his own theories of language use—his views were entirely orthodox. Nor was he especially interested in making money. Growing up in a family of prosperous Quaker merchants, he had always been well off and had earned enough income as a lawyer and businessman to retire at the age of thirty-nine. Unlike Webster's
Institute
or
Dissertations,
Murray's grammar book was not written with the American public in mind. Yet during most of the nineteenth century, Americans would invoke the name
Murray
as a synonym for proper grammar. Today, although his name is virtually unknown, his ideas about usage live on in America's favorite style guides.

Lindley Murray was a Pennsylvanian by birth, but when he began writing
English Grammar, Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners
in 1794, he and his wife, Hannah, were living on the outskirts of York. They had moved there nearly a decade earlier, hoping a cool climate would benefit Murray's health. The forty-nine-year-old Murray had recently become an invalid, unable to walk more than a few yards without exhaustion. At first the Murrays hoped to return to New York after two or three years. Unfortunately, instead of improving, Murray's health grew worse. He developed increasingly debilitating muscle weakness, which would have made travel a serious challenge, so they stayed in York. (No one knows exactly what was wrong with Murray. One suggestion is that he had post-polio syndrome, brought on by a childhood polio attack. Other possibilities are that he suffered from some form of multiple sclerosis or myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes muscle weakness.)
1

Murray and his wife lived quietly in the small village of Holdgate (now called Holgate). Because he was unable to move around, Murray's days were circumscribed. He spent his time mainly in his sitting room, a large, comfortable space where a fire burned year-round. The room featured two bow windows, one overlooking the garden, the other the road to York. Those views were as close as Murray got to the outdoors most of the time. Once a day, if he could, he walked slowly out to a closed carriage, using a plank to level out the space between the front steps and the vehicle. The coachman then drove him around for an hour or so to enjoy the fresh air.

Visitors often remarked that Murray, a tall, slender man with pleasant features, looked remarkably well considering his condition. He kept his health stable by following a regular schedule of light meals and plenty of sleep. He also followed a work schedule as well as he could. His wife wheeled him into his sitting room in the morning using a wheeled armchair. He then moved onto the sofa. Here, using a portable writing desk, he spent most of the day reading, writing, and conducting business.

In spite of Murray's infirmity, he was active in his community. One reason why he and Hannah had chosen to settle near York was the area's vibrant Quaker community, the second largest in England. Murray notes in his memoirs that the two had hoped to settle among “religious and exemplary persons.”
2
Shortly after their arrival they applied to join the York Monthly Meeting (the local congregation) and were not only accepted as members, but were quickly appointed as Elders. That meant they had responsibility for the spiritual education of fellow members, both adults and children. Murray's limited trips away from home often took him to the Quaker meetinghouse.

Murray's first book grew out of both his circumstances and his religious beliefs. In 1787 he compiled a collection of “testimonies”—thoughts on illness, affliction, and death—titled
The Power of Religion on the Mind.
As he explains in his memoirs, he was inspired to write the book after reflecting on the “lively pleasure and satisfaction” that he received from “perusing the sentiments of eminent and virtuous persons on the subject of religion and futurity when they approached the close of life.” He later wrote to a friend that he wanted to promote “piety and virtue … without the design of advancing … any one religious profession.”
3

The book features an eclectic group of people from far-flung countries and various times—Confucius to John Donne, Caesar Borgia to Isaac Newton.
The Power of Religion
was instantly popular, foreshadowing the tremendous success of his grammar writings. His way of handling its publication and distribution, as well as the resulting profits, was also typical of his later books.