HLM's book, The American Language, Supplement II, is a tribute to Noah Webster. It is a bit of a surprise that he didn't dedicate the book to the remembrance of Noah Webster.
Here is only a part of what he wrote, much in the way of quotations from Webster. He must have considered Webster as a brother in their expression of love for the American vocabulary and the twist and turns to which it could be adapted to express most succinctly the thought one was expressing.
"That the grammar taught by these poor Holoferneses(A general who lead an attack against the Israelis and was beheaded in his sleep. HLM must have believed that those attacking NW were on a false mission and doomed to failure. And they were.), male and female, is full of absurdities engendered by the mediaeval attempt to force English into the Procrustean bed of Latin was recognized by Noah Webster so long ago as 1789. 'The most difficult task now to be performed by the advocates of pure English,' he wrote in his 'Dissertations on the English Language,' 'is to restrain the influence of men learned in Greek and Latin, but ignorant of their own tongue, who have labored to reject much good English because they have not understood the original construction of the language.' And then:'They seem not to consider that grammar is formed on language, and not language on grammar. Instead of examining to find what the English language is they endeavor to show what it ought to be according their own rules.'1
Mencken also found this very quotable part of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams in 1820. ^�Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the workshop in which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word, if ill-formed, it is rejected in society; if well formed, adopted, and after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries.'2 (It should be added that many consider libraries as places where you keep "old" books. Not so today. Most of the modern libraries have few if any books that were published twenty years ago. Both Webster and Mencken would be outraged by this destruction of our heritage, since with time, only that which has been written by the currently accepted authors will find their way into the libraries. The same applies to dictionaries. The Random House dictionary is to exclude words that are particularly troubling to certain groups, i.e., not politically correct. This, even when the words are in current use and well understood by the public. The pc police continue to expand their venue. Bloomberg the trading company has decided to corral the use of certain terms to prevent their traders from sending them in email. A computer program scans the messages for what is considered inappropriate terms and deletes them. Of course this can cause some problems but that's not the role of the censor. No censors only censor. Take as example, the very popular use of the terms to define different types of carpet, there are sculptured, berber, cut berber and shag among many others. Most of these names pass the censor but shag does not. Seems that as all who follow the movies have discovered shag means sexual intercourse, and is prominently displayed on the billboards advertising the movie. What to do? Why the Bloomberg censors simply prevent its usage. A step ahead of the pc police are the brokers who now make a game of seeing how many ways they can defeat the program by creating new words and phrases that the program can't identify and thus block. So Jefferson was right, "Society is the workshop in which new ones (words) are elaborated.")
Paying homage to Webster, Mencken wrote, The influence of Webster's Spelling Book was really stupendous. ... How many copies were sold before it was at last displaced by more "scientific" texts is unknown, for it was republished, sometimes with the author's license and sometimes as piracy, by dozens of enterprising Barabbases (A blood sucker. Barabbas was offered as an alternative to Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate) in all parts of the country. ... An estimate by Noah's great-granddaughter, is 100,000,000 however other estimates are as much as four times that number. And this was Webster's "secondary" work.
My own copy which was my fathers, is dated 1908 and is in the hardly revised form from the original published by Noah Webster. It should be noted that the Speller was truly a "diction" ary. How to pronounce? This was the essence of Webster. One had to first sound out a word and then spell it. In addition, if teachers were good at it, and I am sure that the Judge was, they made games of spelling. To-wit, from my Father's instruction on how to spell Mississippi: "M...I...crooked letter....crooked letter....I...crooked letter... crooked letter....I....humpback....humpback....I. " With such a graphic explanation, it was easy for the teacher to then go on to teach about Mississippi the state, the river, its role in the Confederacy, &c. This is also how it was possible for students of several different ages and abilities to be grouped together in a one room school for their formal education.
Far more influential was Webster's series of dictionaries.
Webster began work on the dictionary in 1800. And in 1806 came out with the "American Dictionary" as a draft called "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language". The work continued til mid 1820 when he published (at his own expense since the publisher lacked funds) in two volumes. While competitive dictionaries were available, Webster's slowly gained preemption with the "plain people" and by 1840 was the authority "par excellence". (Note at this time in his life, Noah was 80 and near death, but he mortgaged his home in Hartford, Connecticut to bring out a second edition. How many authors today would have such commitment to their work to take this action?) The single volume work issued in 1847 and the became the reference work most found in almost every literate household from that date forward. Mencken speculates that the number of dictionaries printed probably equals that of the "Blue Backed Speller".
Other dictionaries were prepared by Webster in addition to those mentioned previously. One in particular is "Webster's Counting House and Family Dictionary"3 This book of some 490 pages covered a range of subjects in addition to that of a dictionary. It well may be the first book of Synonymes published in the United States. Webster gives credit to Crabb and others who he recognized as being more expert in the field than he.
Perhaps most important is the Memoir to Noah Webster. No credit is given but since the book was abridged by William Webster (1856) it may be assumed that he at least provided the information contained in the Memoir.
The Memoir puts flesh on the bones of Noah, especially in regard to his attention to the copyrights of an author. He almost single handed was responsible for the establishment of laws regarding ownership of intellectual properties . Not a bad accomplishment in itself.
But there's more. Noah Webster loved this Country. During and following the war of 1776, he perceived the insufficiency of the old confederation of states for the purpose of a united people. According to the Memoir, Webster made the first distinct proposal through the medium of the press, for a new constitution of the United States. And it was done!
So when you pick up your dictionary, think of Noah Webster, not Daniel. And be thankful for the collection of words in our American dictionaries and books of American synonyms plus our copyright laws and the Constitution of the United States, but maybe not in that order! Is it a wonder that Henry L. Mencken held Dr. Noah Webster in such high regard. 1 pp 333, The American Language; Supplement II,; pp ix, pp 37, Dissertations on the English Language, Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. 2 pp 334, The American Language; Supplement II , ibid. 3 Memoir of Noah Webster, Webster's Counting House and Family Dictionary, Mason Brothers, 1856. ****
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