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language.… English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be. 8
    Six years before this, in January, 1774, some anonymous writer, perhaps also Adams, had printed a similar proposal in the
Royal American Magazine
. That it got some attention is indicated by the fact that Sir John Wentworth, the Loyalist Governor of New Hampshire, thought it of sufficient importance to enclose a reprint of it in a dispatch to the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, dated April 24. I quote from it briefly:
    The English language has been greatly improved in Britain within a century, but its highest perfection, with every other branch of human knowledge, is perhaps reserved for this land of light and freedom. As the people through this extensive country will speak English, their advantages for polishing their language will be great, and vastly superior to what the people of England ever enjoyed. I beg leave to propose a plan for perfecting the English language in America, thro’ every future period of its existence;
viz:
That a society for this purpose should be formed, consisting of members in each university and seminary, who shall be stiled
Fellows of the American Society of Language
; That the society … annually publish some observations upon the language, and from year to year correct, enrich and refine it, until perfection stops their progress and ends their labor. 9
    Whether this article was Adams’s or not, he kept on returning to the charge, and in a second letter to the president of Congress, dated September 30, 1780, he expressed the hope that, after an American Academy had been set up, England would follow suit.
    This I should admire. England will never more have any honor, excepting now and then that of imitating the Americans. I assure you, Sir, I am not altogether in jest. I see a general inclination after English in France, Spain and Holland, and it may extend throughout Europe. The population and commerce of America will force their language into general use. 10
    In his first letter to the president of Congress Adams deplored the fact that “it is only very lately that a tolerable dictionary [of English] has been published, even by a private person, 11 and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual.” He did not know it, but at that very moment a young schoolmaster in the backwoods of New York was preparing to meet both lacks. He was Noah Webster. Three years later he returned to Hartford, his birthplace, and brought out his “Grammatical Institute of the English Language,” and soon afterward he began the labors which finally bore fruit in his “
American
Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828. 12 Webster was a pedantic and rather choleric fellow — someone once called him “the critic and cockcomb-general of the United States” —, and his later years were filled with ill-natured debates over his proposals for reforming English spelling, and over the more fanciful etymologies in his dictionary. But though, in this enlightened age, he would scarcely pass as a philologian, he was extremely well read for his time, and if he fell into the blunder of deriving all languages from the Hebrew of the Ark, he was at least shrewd enough to notice the relationship between Greek, Latin and the Teutonic languages before it was generally recognized. He was always at great pains to ascertain actual usages, and in the course of his journeys from State to State to perfect his copyright on his first spelling-book 13 he