Note 4 — Chapter VI · “PETER PORCUPINE, AT YOUR SERVICE!”

Thornton’s language—this is an allusion to a prize dissertation on written and printed language, by one Wm. Thornton, M.D. It was published in Philadelphia in 1793, and introduced some new symbols. Cobbett’s objection to it was, that it was an attempt to make an American language, as an improvement on English. For the curious in such matters, the title of the Essay is “Cadmus; or, a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language,” &c.

Noah Webster, long before the great Dictionary made him famous, had written “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), which included an Essay on Spelling Reform, a capital advantage of which reform would be the “making a difference between English and American orthography.” (Vide Allibone; also Duyckinck’s “Cyclo. Amer. Lit.”)