decision in 1794. Webster, by the way, was not unmindful of his
college. In 1790, as an encouragement to the study of the English
language, he made a foundation for an annual prize to be given to the
author of the composition which should be judged best by the faculty;
but the foundation does not appear to have been permanent. Just as later
he went to the printing-offices to secure a conformity to his
orthography, so in the earlier years he had directed his arguments at
the schools. In 1798 he published "A Letter to the Governors,
Instructors, and Trustees of the Universities, and other Seminaries of
Learning in the United States, on the Errors of English Grammar," from
which I have already quoted; and appeals to these men, who are to give
direction to the education of the young, to free themselves from a
slavish dependence upon England. "It will be honorable to us as a
nation, and more useful to our native tongue and to science, that we
examine the grounds of all rules and changes before we adopt them, and
reject all such as have not obvious propriety for their foundation or
utility for their object."

Webster's studies had thus been gravitating toward lexicography, and the
habits of mind which had been confirmed in his various pursuits were
precisely such as would serve best the purpose which he was gradually
forming. Dr. Chauncey Goodrich, in the memoir which is prefixed to the
Dictionary, remarks upon certain habits formed by him early in life,
which, becoming fixed principles, were of inestimable advantage in his
labors afterward. While his memory was tenacious, he was a great hoarder
of documents and marker of books; he was a careful methodizer of his
knowledge; he accustomed himself to a great variety and to unceasing
diligence in literary toil, and he was perpetually going back of facts
to the principles which he thought to underlie them.

It had been his custom for many years to jot down words which he met in
reading, and failed to find in dictionaries, and his labors upon the
Spelling-Book and Grammar had familiarized him with the task of
discriminating and defining, and had also disclosed to him the
deficiencies in that respect of current dictionaries. In 1806 he
published "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language," in which
he announced, with an amusing foretaste of the larger claims of the
"Unabridged," that it contained five thousand more words than were to be
found in the best English compends. T