in brief, a speller, a grammar, and a reader. The formal and
dignified title of the work was the tribute which Webster paid to
old-fashioned scholarship; and it is curious to see the evolution by
which it finally became the well-known "Elementary." One or two ideas
were working their way out in Webster's mind. In the first place he did
not like the book generally in use, "Dilworth's New Guide to the English
Tongue;" then he saw with more or less clearness that, in the separation
from England that was fast taking place, the people in America must
necessarily have their own school-books, and his mind ran forward even
to a belief in a distinct and separate literature and a considerable
difference in language. Yet at this time I am not sure that he
appreciated the pregnant truth, so familiar to us now, of a vital
connection between popular education and popular sovereignty. He began
to see it, and was influenced by it; but his work was mightier than he
then knew, for he had not been educated in a free republic.

How simple and slight a change in methods of text-books marks the
introduction of Webster's spelling-book, from which millions of
Americans have learned to spell the names on a ballot! Lay Dilworth and
a first Webster side by side: the likeness and the difference of the two
are apparent. It is clear that Dilworth served as a model, and that
Webster's book started simply as an improvement upon the English
original. Even in externals there is a similarity. The early editions of
Webster had a dim, hacked-out engraving on wood of Noah Webster, Jr.,
Esq., to correspond with the scarcely more refined portrait of Tho.
Dilworth which prefaces the "New Guide." Both books have long lists of
words, proceeding from the simplest combination to words of five
syllables, and even in Dilworth to proper names of six syllables,
containing such retired words as Abelbethmaacah; but in Webster these
lists proceed upon a regular gradation of pronunciation, while in
Dilworth they follow such confusing and arbitrary order as is indicated
by the heading, "Words of five, six, etc., letters, viz.: two vowels and
the rest consonants; the latter vowel serving only to lengthen the sound
of the former, except where it is otherwise marked," which is nearly as
luminous as a direction in knitting. Each offers illustrated fables as
reading lessons, and shorter sentences are provided for first lessons in
reading. In Dilworth these are, without exception