When Dennie learned that a certain Noah Webster was to publish "A Columbian Dictionary" containing "American corrections of the English language," he had a few suggestions to offer. The Columbian language he understood to be an elegant dialect of the English, but, he went on, "there is one remark which I would wish with deference to submit to our great lexicographer before I finish this paper. As his dictionary, I understand, is to be the dictionary of the vulgar tongue in New England, would it not be better to prefix to it the epithet _Cabotian_ instead of Columbian? Sebastian Cabot first discovered these Eastern States, and ought not to be robbed of the honor of giving his name to them. I would, therefore, propose calling New England Cabotia, the other States America, and the Southern continent Columbia." He then proposed, in irony, a list of a few "Cabotian words"--happify, gunning, belittle, quiddle, composuist, sot, etc. _Lengthy_ he stigmatizes as "a foolish, flat, unauthorized, unmusical Indian word".[12] In conclusion (_Port Folio_, I, page 370), "let then the projected volume of _foul and unclean_ things bear his own Christian name and be called NOAH'S ARK!"
[12] "Lengthy" is the American for long. It is frequently used by the _classical_ writers of the New World.--(John Davis' "Travels in the United States," page 126.)
We meet the first notice of Benjamin West, as a boy of 19 years, in Bradford's second _American Magazine_. In the first volume of the _Port Folio_ we find the first of a long series of sketches in praise of West's genius and generosity. "It is a melancholy and miraculous circumstance," the satirical writer begins, "that this American artist, after experiencing the good fortune to be born and educated in Pennsylvania, should sullenly retreat to England and exchange the glorious privileges of our happy, tranquil and rising Republic for the smoke and servility of the city of London. It is perfectly inexplicable that he should barter citizenship for knighthood, that he should receive a king's money, and, more provoking still, be soothed by regal praise. What are titles, honours and gold to an independent Republican who, remaining at home, might have had the noblest and amplest opportunities of _giving away_ as many pictures as he pleased."