erence
largely to readings.

The great bulk of Webster's emendations were of the most trivial and
innocent character. _Whosoever_ and _whatsoever_ he always cut down by
the omission of the second syllable; _unto_ and _until_ he changed to
_to_ and _till_; _wherein_ and its fellows he usually rendered by _in
which_, _on which_, _in that_ or _this_; _ate_ he preferred to _did
eat_, and _yes_ to _yea_. It was in general a picayune revision,
sufficient to annoy those who had an ear for the old version, and really
offering only such positive helps in interpretation as were generally in
the possession of fairly educated men. That he should have done the work
at all and have done it so faintly is what surprises the reader. As a
commercial undertaking it was no mean matter, and it was followed by
the publication of an edition of the New Testament alone. What a strange
miscalculation of forces it appears to have been! It implied that
readers generally were as much martinets in language as the editor, and
it did not take into account the immense inertia to be overcome, when a
single man should undertake to set aside the accumulated reverence of
two centuries. The revision of the Bible by Webster was in singular
confirmation of traits of character which have already been noted. He
had unlimited confidence in himself, an almost childish ignorance of
obstacles, a persistence which was unembarrassed by the indifference of
others, and, from his long continued occupation, a habit of magnifying
the trivial. He had not, in such a work as this, the qualifications of a
scholar; he had simply the training of a school-master; he was ignorant
of what he was undertaking, and his independent revision of the Bible
failed to win attention, not because it was audacious, but because it
was not bold enough; it offered no real contribution to Biblical
criticism.

He secured for it, indeed, a certain endorsement. A testimonial, signed
by the president and the most distinguished members of the faculty of
Yale College, recites cautiously: "Dr. Webster's edition of the Bible,
in which the language of the translation is purified from obsolete,
ungrammatical, and exceptional words and phrases, is approved and used
by many clergymen and other gentlemen very competent to judge of its
merits," an ingenious form of words which, I hope, satisfied Dr.
Webster. Others, chiefly his neighbors in New Haven, signed more
elaborate documents, intended, apparently, to