WEBSTER, NOAH, American author and philologist, was born at Hartford, Conn. Oct. 16, 1758, and entered Yale college in 1774. In his third college year, be servea under his father, a militia capt. in the war of the revolution. He was admitted to the bar in 1781, but engaged in scholastic and literary occupations. Employed in teach ing a school at Goshen, N. Y., he prepared his Grammatical Institutes of the English Language, published in three parts; and edited Governor Winthrop's Journal. In 1785, he wrote Sketches of American Policy, advocating the formation of a new constitution, and gave public lectures on the English language, which were published in 1789. He taught an academy in Philadelphia, and wrote on the constitution; and in 1788, pub lished the American Magazine in New York. After a few years' law practice at Hart ford, he engaged, in 1793, in the editorship of the Minerva, a federalist daily paper in New York. In 1799, he published A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, the yellow fever having broken out in New York; and pamphlets on international law, banking, and finance. In 1807, he published A Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language, and commenced his almerican Dictionary of the' English Lan guage; but finding difficulties in etymology, he devoted ten years to its study, and pre pared a Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages; then began his dictionary anew, and in seven years completed it. In 1824, he came to Europe, to consult books and learned
men, spending some months at Paris and Cambridge. In 1828, an edition of 2,500 copies of his dictionary, in 2 vols. 4to, was issued; followed by one of 3,000 copies in England..
Numerous abridgements have been made, which found a large sale. His Elementary Spelling-book, founded on his institutes, up to 1802, had been sold to the extent of 41,000,000 copies. A new and thoroughly revised and enlarged edition of his dictionary was finished in 1806, and it is now perhaps the most complete dictionary of the English language yet published. Mr. W. also published a popular History of the United States, nada Manual of Useful Studies. He was a judge, a member of the state legislature, and one of the founders of Amherst college. He died at New Haven, May 28, 1843.