CONTENTS. IV SONNET TO THE AMERICAN MUSE. BY L. F. ROBINSON, THE AMERICAN LITERARY MAGAZINE. VOL. II. JANUARY, 1848. No. 1. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF NOAH WEBSTER, LL. D. BY CHAUNCEY A. GOODRICH, D. D. Few names are more familiar to the entire population of the United States than that of NOAH WEBSTER. His works have been text-books in a large proportion of our schools for two generations, and are now more extensively used than ever, in almost every part of our land. His dictionary of the English language has stood unrivaled during the last nineteen years for the copiousness of its vocabulary, and the fullness and accuracy of its definitions. It has carried his fame not only throughout our own wide boundaries, but into all the kingdoms of Europe; and has reflected that honor on the literature of our country, which has made it a just object of national pride to every American. In the life of such a man every citizen of the United States has a personal interest. To the young, especially, it affords lessons of instruction and encouragement, which can not be too highly prized. It exhibits the spectacle of youthful talent cast upon the world in the midst of a great revolutionary struggle; animated by an intense love of letters while as yet our nation had no literature of its own; toiling on under poverty, neglect, or obloquy; until it rose by slow degrees into usefulness and distinction, and at last became not only the instructor of millions in the rudiments of education, but the associate of distinguished patriots in defending our early institutions as exemplified in the administration of Washington, and an active instrument in laying the foundations of a literature which is al. ready making itself a place and a name among the most distinguished nations of the globe. Such an example belongs especially to a young country like our own. It could hardly have existed in any other; and it is the object of this sketch, to hold it forth as a guide and incentive to those who may be called upon hereafter to uphold the institutions of their fathers, and to raise the intellectual character of our people to a point of elevation correspondent to the position we occupy among the nations of the earth. NOAH WEBSTER was born on the 16th day of October, 1758, in an agricultural village, which forms the western part of the town of Hartford, Connecticut, at the distance of three miles from the center of the city. He was a descendant in the fifth generation of John Webster, one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut, who was for a long time among the most active members of the executive council, and at a subsequent period the chief magistrate or governor of the colony. On his mother's side he was descended from William Bradford, the second governor of the colony of Plymouth. His father was a man of vigorous intellect but limited education, whose life was spent in the cultivation of a small farm which remained in the family for some generations, and which constituted his only means of support. He was for many years a justice of the peace in the town of Hartford, and an officer of the church in the parish where he lived. The whole family, consisting of three sons and two daughters, were trained up like their father before them, to severe and unremitting industry in the employments of the farm; and it was probably owing to the habits thus formed, of early rising, strict temperance, and vigorous exertion in the open air, that they gained that hardihood of constitution which made them, as a family, remarkable for their longevity. The father reached the advanced age of ninety-two. Of his three sons, one lived to the age of eighty, and the others to that of eighty-five. One of the daughters was more than seventy, and the other had attained to nearly the same period at the time of their death. Until the age of fourteen, Mr. Webster was constantly engaged in the cultivation of the farm, and gave no indications of that intellectual superiority, for which he was afterwards distinguished. His early education had been extremely defective, for the entire course of instruction in the schools of that day embraced hardly any books but Dilworth's Spelling Book, with the Psalter and Testament. At this period he was led by accidental causes which are not fully known, to reflect on the advantages of a collegiate education; and the whole of his native ardor of mind was now awakened and directed to this object. His father for a time opposed his wishes, feeling unable out of his slender income to provide the necessary means. Overcome, however, by the importunities of his son, though wholly unconscious of the results which were to follow, he at last gave a reluctant consent. In the autumn of 1772, Mr. Webster commenced his classical studies with the minister of the parish, the Rev. Nathan Perkins. In consequence of his father's limited circumstances, however, he was still compelled to labor nearly half his time on the farm; but such was his diligence in study under all these disadvantages, that he finished his |