Regard for his father made Webster begin practice in the town of Boscawen, near his early home; but his father died within a year, and he removed to Portsmouth, the largest town of the State. Here he took a leading place at the bar, having but one rival. In May 1813 he entered Congress as a representative from New Hampshire, being placed at once on the committee of foreign affairs. As a moderate Federalist, he held that attacks on Canada should oease, and that the war should be confined to the ocean. His first speech showed that the raw New Hampshire boy of a dozen years before had developed new powers. “If the war must continue, go to the ocean. If you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every indication of your fortune points you. There the united wishes and exertions of the nation will go with you Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water’s edge.” The position of any Federalist in Congress, however, was not a wide sphere of influence; and Webster, removing to Boston in 1816, gave up political life for some years.

At the Massachusetts bar Webster soon gained a place as prominent as he had held in New Hampshire, and within three years his reputation as a lawyer had become national. His national standing was gained by his argument in the “Dartmouth College case,” practically endorsed by the Supreme Court. Dartmouth College had been chartered by the king in 1769. In 1816 the New Hampshire legislature undertook to alter the charter and reorganize the corporation; and the State courts sustained the legislature in a suit brought by the old trustees against the new. On appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1818, Webster contended that the College was an eleemosynary corporation, over which the legislature had no more power than the king who chartered it; that the king had no power to void such a charter, and the New Hampshire legislature no such sovereign powers as parliament; that the legislature’s action came within the Federal constitution’s prohibition of State legislation altering contracts; that “the charter of 1769 is a contract;” that “the acts in question impair this contract;” and that they were therefore unconstitutional and void. The Supreme Court upheld Webster’s view, and it was soon seen that he had worked a serious change in the relations of the States to corporations, as they had thus far been understood. The States endeavoured to meet the new rule by inserting in their charters clauses retaining the right to alter them; but the spirit of the “Dartmouth College case,” which has always had its opponents among American lawyers, has had its influence upon judges everywhere, in every variety of cognate cases. From this time Webster was recognized as the leading lawyer of the country, and his services were in constant demand.

His cases are quite beyond statement within the space here available. Some of his leading constitutional cases were those of Gibbons v. Ogden, in 1824, in which he overthrew the action of the New York legislature, in granting to Ogden, assignee of Fulton and Livingstone, a monopoly of steam navigation in New York waters, as an interference with the right of Congress to regulate commerce; Ogden v. Saunders, in 1827, in which he attacked the right of a State to pass bankruptcy laws; the Girard College case, in 1844, in which he maintained that Christianity was an essential part of the common law; and the case of Luther v. Borden, commonly known as the Rhode Island case, in 1848, in which he laid the foundation for the subsequent definition of the “guarantee clause” of the constitution, and stated the meaning of the “republican government” of a State. Like other American lawyers, he made no distinction in his practice between kinds of cases, and was often retained in criminal causes. The most celebrated of these were the trials of Goodridge and Knapp; in the latter (6 Webster’s Works, 53) is the passage on the power of conscience, which has been declaimed by countless American schoolboys.

Webster’s reputation as an orator began with his address at Plymouth in 1820, on the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. It was increased by his address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument in 1825, on the 50th anniversary of the battle, and by that which commemorated in 1826 the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the coincident deaths of Jefferson and John Adams. On every great public occasion thereafter, if Webster was obtainable, he was held to be the natural speaker to be chosen. His finest subsequent speeches were made on the completion of the Bunker Hill monument in 1843, and at the laying of the corner-stone of the addition to the Capitol at Washington in 1851.

In December 1823 Webster returned to Congress as a representative from Massachusetts, and his first speech, in January 1824, in support of a resolution to send a commissioner to Greece, then in insurrection, made him the first of Congressional speakers. During his service in the house the tariff of 1824 came up for discussion. Representing a commercial district, Webster’s speech has always been a source of gratification to American opponents of protection. He repudiated the name of “American system,” claimed by Clay for the system of protection which he was introducing. He cited with cordial approval the expressed belief of English statesmen that English manufactures had prospered in spite of protection, not because of it, and their desire for “unrestricted trade.” He attacked the “old notion” of the balance of trade with such vigour that he felt compelled to apologize “for speaking irreverently of the dead.” He stated the manner in which, under unrestricted trade, the American production in cotton, woollens, and iron had already come to rival that of England, protected for hundreds of years, and the loss in labour which would come from an attempt, by legal protection, to “support a business that cannot support itself.” The whole speech would be a very striking free-trade argument even at the present day. When the tariff of 1828, which was still more protective, came up for discussion, Webster had ceased to oppose protection; but his speech does not attempt to argue in favour of it. It states that his people, after giving warning in 1824 that they would consider protection as the policy of the Government, had gone into protected manufactures, and that he now asked that that policy be not reversed to the injury of his constituents. It can hardly escape notice that, in his published Works, Webster has but two subsequent speeches in Congress on the tariff, both defending protection rather as a policy under which industries had been called into being than as an advisable policy, if the stage had been clear for the adoption of a new policy.

In 1827 Webster was sent to the senate, in which he remained until his death, with the exception of his service in the cabinet in Tyler’s administration. In January 1830 came the crowning event of his political life. A debate on public lands, under a resolution offered by Senator Foot, thence known as “Foot’s resolution,” had wandered off into all possible fields. In course of it, Hayne, of South Carolina, attacked New England for having pursued a selfish policy as to western lands. Webster replied. During Hayne’s answer Webster drew from him the first distinct and public statement of the new doctrine of nullification, of the constitutional right of a State to forbid the execution within its jurisdiction of Acts of Congress which it considered unconstitutional. This had been the product of Calhoun’s intellect, which was generally taken to be the source of Hayne’s inspiration. Webster’s reply is his famous “second speech on Foot’s resolution.” He began by a defence of Massachusetts, which has been severely criticized, and is perhaps open to criticism. But if effect is to be taken as a test, it is above criticism. The remainder of the speech was of intense interest, not merely to New England, but to the whole North and West, and to all the progressive elements of the country. He stated the anarchistic doctrine of nullification in its nakedness, extorted from Hayne an unwilling half-admission of the exactness of his statement, and then went on to trample on it with such an exhibition of logic, sarcasm, and elephantine humour as has never been heard in the senate before or since. It is on this speech that Webster’s fame was built. Southern men had taken the lead so long that it was a new sensation to the North and West to see a Southern leader completely overmatched by their champion; and “Black Dan Webster,” a popular name, due to his dark complexion, beetling brows, and heavy cast of features, was for twenty years the representative of Northern sentiment as to the nature of the Union.

Calhoun took Hayne’s place in the senate in 1833, introduced and defended resolutions endorsing the right of nullification, and was still more fully answered by Webster. For the next seventeen years the records of the senate are full of constitutional arguments between the two. Webster’s oratory made him an invaluable member of the Whig party, and his addresses at political meetings are so numerous as to defy special mention. A leader so distinguished had a fair right to think of the presidency, but it always remained just beyond his reach. In the general Whig confusion of 1836 he received the fourteen electoral votes of Massachusetts. In 1840 the candidature of Harrison left him no chance. In 1844 Webster’s retention of his position under Tyler gave Clay an overwhelming advantage with his party. In 1848 the nomination of Taylor, which Webster declared to be “one not fit to be made,” was a fatal blow to the prospects of the Massachusetts leader. His final failure to obtain the Whig nomination in 1852 put an end to his political career.

When the Whig party came into power in 1841, Webster was appointed secretary of state (foreign affairs), and he retained his post under Tyler, after his colleagues had broken with the new president and resigned. There was good reason for his action. When he entered office war with Great Britain was a probable event of the near future. The M'Leod case, in which the State of New York insisted on trying a British subject, with whose trial the Federal Government had no power to interfere, while the British Government had declared that it would consider conviction and execution a casus belli ; the exercise of the right of search by British vessels on the coast of Africa, of which Americans had a deep-seated detestation, quite apart from any feeling about the slave-trade; the Maine boundary, as to which the action of a State might at any time bring the federal Government into armed collision with Great Britain,—all these at once met the new secretary, and ho felt that he had no right to abandon his work for party reasons. With the special commissioner from Great Britain, Lord Ashburton, he concluded the treaty of 1842, which settled all these questions satisfactorily to both parties. At the same time Webster took the opportunity to end the long controversy as to the right of impressment. Sixteen years afterwards the British Government admitted at last the correctness of the American position.

The treaty of 1842 also introduced the principle of extradition into the connexion between the two countries. It had been admitted once before, in Jay’s treaty of 1794, but only as to murder and forgery, and only until 180G.

Leaving the cabinet in 1843, Webster was returned to the senate in 1845 and spent the remainder of his life there. He opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, and was, as before, the recognized spokesman of his party. As the growing intensity of the quarrel over the organization of the territory acquired from Mexico revealed the depth of the chasm which now yawned between the sections, Webster’s standing-ground in American politics disappeared. His 7th of March speech, in 1850, which stamped him, in the opinion of many of his former Northern worshippers, as a recreant bidding for Southern votes for the presidency, was really little different from his former words. It was the country that had changed. He was still for the Union as the one controlling consideration, with an equal dislike for the abolitionist and the secessionist, who endangered the Union. But the North and the South were already so far apart that not even Webster could stand with one foot in one and the other foot in the other section; and his fate was parallel with that of John Dickinson, who essayed a similar rôle during the revolution. Angered at the spirit with which his speech was received, Webster threw all his influence towards driving through the Whig Convention of 1852 an endorsement of the compromise of 1850 “in all its parts,” including, of course, the Fugitive Slave Act. The result was his own failure to receive the Whig nomination for the presidency, and the downfall of his party. Just before the election he died at his home, Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 1852.

Webster was twice married—to Grace Fletcher, of New Hampshire, in 1808, and two years after her death to Catherine Bayard le Roy, of New York, in 1829. One of his sons, Edward, lost his life in the Mexican War; his only surviving child, Fletcher Webster, colonel of a Massachusetts regiment, was killed at Bull Run. In marked contrast to Webster’s wonderfully able treatment of public financial affairs, his management of his private finances was notoriously shiftless,—so much so that, in his later years, the care of them was assumed by a voluntary committee of Boston business men. Like other men of his time, he was neither careful nor temperate in table enjoyment. Washington people still tell of the enthusiasm with which, after dinner, he once insisted on standing up in a theatre-box, to join in the chorus of the American national hymn. He was a devoted angler, and intensely interested in scientific agriculture; much of his Private Correspondence is connected with the latter subject.

Webster named as his literary executors Edward' Everett, C. C. Felton, George Ticknor, and George Ticknor Curtis. By this arrangement the standard edition of his Works, in six volumes, appeared (1851). In the first volume is a Life by Everett. Sec also Webster’s Private Correspondence, Knapp’s Life of Webster (1835), March’s Reminiscences of Congress (1850), Lanman’s Private Life of Webster (1856), Curtis’s Life of Webster (1869), Harvey’s Reminiscences of Webster (1877), Lodge’s Life of Webster (1883). (A. J. )

WEBSTER, John, the greatest of Shakespeare’s contemporaries or successors, was a writer for the stage in the year 1601, and published in 1624 the city pageant for that year, “invented and written by John Webster, merchant-tailor.” In the same year a tragedy by Ford and Webster was licensed for the stage; it is one of the numberless treasures now lost to us through the carelessness of genius or the malignity of chance. Beyond the period included between these two dates there are no traces to be found of his existence; nor is anything known of it with any certainty during that period, except that seven plays appeared with his name on the title page, three of them only the work of his unassisted hand. His first noteworthy appearance in print, as far as we know, was as the author of certain additions to Marston’s tragicomedy of The Malcontent ; these probably do not extend beyond the induction, a curious and vivacious prelude to a powerful and irregular work of somewhat morbid and sardonic genius. Three years later, in 1607, two comedies and a tragedy, “written by Thomas Dekker and John Webster,” were given to the press. The comedies are lively and humorous, full of movement and incident; but the beautiful interlude of poetry which distinguishes the second scene of the fourth act of Westward Ho! is unmistakably and unquestionably the work of Dekker; while the companion comedy of Northward Ho! is composed throughout of homespun and coarse-grained prose. The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt is apparently a most awkward and injurious abridgment of a historical play in two parts on a pathetic but undramatic subject, the fate of Lady Jane Grey. In this lost play of Lady Jane Heywood, Chettle, and Smith had also taken part; so that even in its original form it can hardly have been other than a rough piece of patchwork. There are some touches of simple eloquence and rude dramatic ability in the mangled and corrupt residue which is all that survives of it; but on the whole this “history” is crude, meagre, and unimpressive. In 1612 John Webster stood revealed to the then somewhat narrow world of readers as a tragic poet and dramatist of the very foremost rank in the very highest class. The White Devil, also known as Vittoria Corombona, is a tragedy based on events then comparatively recent—on a chronicle of crime aud retribution in which the leading circumstances were altered and adapted with the most delicate art and the most consummate judgment from the incompleteness of incomposite reality to the requisites of the stage of Shakespeare. By him alone among English poets have the finest scenes and passages of this tragedy been ever surpassed or equalled in the crowning qualities of tragic or dramatic poetry,—in pathos and passion, in subtlety and strength, in harmonious variety of art and infallible fidelity to nature. Eleven years had elapsed when the twin masterpiece of its author —if not indeed a still greater or more absolute masterpiece —was published by the poet who had given it to the stage seven years before. The Duchess of Malfy (an Anglicized version of Amalfi, corresponding to such designations as Florence, Venice, and Naples) was probably brought on the stage about the time of the death of Shakespeare; it was first printed in the memorable year which witnessed the first publication of his collected plays. This tragedy stands out among its compeers as one of the imperishable and ineradicable landmarks of literature. All the great qualities apparent in The White Devil reappear in The Duchess of Malfy, combined with a yet more perfect execution, and utilized with a yet more consummate skill. No poet has ever so long and so successfully sustained at their utmost height and intensity the expressed emotions and the united effects of terror and pity. The transcendent imagination and the impassioned sympathy which inspire this most tragic of all tragedies save King Lear are fused together in the fourth act into a creation which has hardly been excelled for unflagging energy of impression and of pathos in all the dramatic or poetic literature of the world. Its wild and fearful sublimity of invention is not more exceptional than the exquisite justice and tenderness and subtlety of its expression. Some of these executive merits may be found in an ill-constructed and ill-conditioned tragi-comedy which was printed in the same year; but few readers will care to remember much more of The Devil’s Law-Case than the admirable scenes and passages which found favour in the unerring and untiring sight of Webster’s first and final interpreter or commentator, Charles Lamb. Thirty-one years later the noble tragedy of Appius and Virginia was given to the world,—a work which would alone have sufficed to perpetuate the memory of its author among all competent lovers of English poetry at its best. Seven years afterwards an unprincipled and ignorant bookseller published, under the title of A Cure for a Cuckold, a play of which he assigned the authorship to John Webster and William Rowley. This attribution may or may not be accurate; the play is a mixture of coarsely realistic farce and gracefully romantic comedy. An elegy on Henry, prince of Wales, and a few slight occasional verses, compose the rest of Webster’s remaining works.

Webster’s claims to a place among the chief writers of his country were ignored for upwards of two centuries. In 1830 the Rev. Alexander Dyce first collected and edited the works of a poet who had found his first adequate recognition twenty-two years earlier at the pious and fortunate hands of Lamb. But we cannot imagine that a presentiment or even a foreknowledge of this long delay in the payment of a debt so long due from his countrymen to the memory of so great a poet would seriously have disturbed or distressed the mind of the man who has given us the clue to his nature in a single and an imperishable sentence—“I rest silent in my own work.”

WEBSTER, Noah (1758-1843), American lexicographer, was descended on the father’s side from John Webster of Warwickshire, England, one of the original settlers at Hartford, and for a time governor of Connecticut, and on the mother’s side from William Bradford, second governor of Plymouth and one of the founders of that colony. He was the son of a farmer, and was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, 16th October 1758. In his early years he was engaged in agricultural work, but attended a district school in the winter, and when fourteen years of age began the study of the classics under the Rev. Nathan Perkins, D.D. He entered the freshman’s class at Yale College in 1774, and while in his junior year there he took part as a volunteer in the expedition against General Burgoyne. After graduating in 1778 he supported himself by teaching while prosecuting the study of law. Having begun at this time to note down every word whose meaning he did not properly understand, he was first led to conceive the scheme of a new dictionary from his frequent inability to find proper definitions of words in those in current use. His experience as a teacher soon convinced him also of the need of better instruction books in English, and this he endeavoured to supply by his Grammatical Institute of the English Language, the first part of which appeared in 1783, and a second and third part in the following years. It comprehended a spellingbook, English grammar, and compilation of English reading, and very soon found a place in most of the schools of the United States. In 1785 he prepared a course of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the principal American cities, and published in 1789 under the title Dissertations on the English Language. Meanwhile he also continued to take a deep interest in all prominent political questions. In his Sketches of American Policy (1784) he made the first distinct proposal for a new constitution for the United States, and when the work of the commissioners was completed in 1787 he was asked by them to recommend the new constitution to the American people, which he did in an Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution. After his marriage in 1789 he established himself in the practice of law at Hartford. In 1793 he was induced to found at New York a paper called Minerva, with which was connected the Herald, a semiweekly; the titles of the papers were subsequently altered respectively to the Commercial Advertiser and the New York Spectator. In 1795 he contributed to his paper several articles, under the signature of Curtius, in vindication of Jay’s treaty with Great Britain, which were reprinted and had considerable effect in allaying opposition to it. In 1798 he removed to New Haven, which town he was chosen soon afterwards to represent in the general assembly of Connecticut. In 1802 appeared his well-known treatise on The Eights of Neutrals. Having removed in 1812 to Amherst, he took there a leading part in the establishment of the academy and then of the college, of which he was chosen the first president. He also represented Amherst in the court of Massachusetts. In 1822 he returned to New Haven. Meanwhile his lexicographical studies, though much interrupted by his professional and political duties, had never been entirely suspended. In 1806 he published his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, but this was only preparatory to a larger work. In 1824 he sailed for Europe to complete his researches, and after spending some time in Paris continued his labours in the library at Cambridge, where he finished the dictionary. It was published in 1828, and a second edition with many additions appeared in 1841. He also completed the revision of an appendix a few days before his death, which took place 20th May 1843.

In 1833 Webster published an edition of the Bible, “with amendments of the language,” and again in 1839 an edition of the New Testament. In early life he wrote a History of the United States, of which a revised edition appeared in 1839. He was also the author of Historical Notices of Banking Institutions and Insurance Companies (1802), and a Collection of Papers on Political and Literary Subjects (1843). Since his death several revised and enlarged editions of the Dictionary have appeared. It was the result of much labour and research, and on this account, as well as for the clearness and carefulness of its definitions, it still holds a leading place among dictionaries of the English language, especially in America. A biography of Webster, by C. A. Goodrich, D.D., is prefixed to the quarto editions of the Dictionary.

WEBSTER, Thomas (1800-1886), figure painter, was born at Ranelagh Street, Pimlico, London, on March 20, 1800. His father was a member of the household of George III.; and the son, having shown an aptitude for music, became a chorister in the Chapel Royal, St James’s. He, however, developed a still stronger love for painting, and in 1821 he was admitted student of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibition he contributed, in 1824, portraits of Mrs Robinson and Family. In the following year he gained the first medal in the school of painting. Till 1879 he continued to exhibit in the Royal Academy work of a genial and gently humorous character, dealing commonly with subjects of familiar incident, and especially of child life. Many of these were exceedingly popular, particularly his Punch (1840), which procured in 1841 his election as A.R.A., followed five years later by full membership. He became an honorary retired academician in 1877, and died at Cranbrook, Kent, on September 23, 1886. His Going into School, or the Truant (1836), and his Dame’s School (1845) are in the National Gallery, and five of his works are in the South Kensington Museum. Many of his paintings have been transcribed by Lumb Stocks, A.R.A., and other of the best engravers of the time.