Journalist; born at Preston, Conn., Dec. 18, 1802; graduated at Brown University 1823; was admitted to the bar in 1829; edited The Weekly Review, Hartford, Conn., 1828–30; from 1830 to his death was editor of the Louisville, Ky., Journal, which he made one of the leading Whig newspapers of the country; author of many fugitive poems and of a “Life” of Henry Clay (1831); “Prenticeana” (1859), a collection of his witticisms, has gone through several enlarged editions. Died at Louisville, Ky., Jan. 22, 1870. His “Life” has been written by G. W. Griffin, and a posthumous edition of his “Poems” was issued in 1876.

Personal

  In appearance Mr. Prentice is short and rather stout, but he has a splendid head. His forehead is massive and full, and his eyes are very black and of the medium size, although they are so over-shadowed by his shaggy eyebrows that at a glance they are supposed to be small and snaky. His nose is shapely, his cheeks are full, and the whole contour of his face is round. His hair retains a jetty blackness, but is thinly distributed over his head, although only a small space of the scalp is actually bald. He is careless about his clothes, and feels utterly desolate in full-dress, which he is sometimes compelled to undergo on state occasions.

  There are some names that have a mysterious charm in them—that go directly from the ear to the heart like echoes from a world of beauty and enchantment—that whisper to us somehow of song and blossom—whose very shadows are fragrant and seductive. Rupert and Voltaire, Richter and Chateaubriand, Sheridan and Tom Marshall, are of this nature, and represent in one sort and another, what might be called the knight errantry of civilization. Prentice belongs to the same class. What Rupert was in the saddle, and Voltaire and Richter in the fight for free opinions; what the friend of Madame Recamier was in diplomacy; what Sheridan was in the commons; what Marshall was before the people—Prentice was to the press…. Prentice was a perfect interpreter of his own times; and when that is said we say of him what can only be said with truth of two or three men in an age. His personality was diffusive as well as ardent. He had a spirit vehement and daring. Now that he is gone there is no one to succeed him; and I doubt whether, if it were possible, it would be safe to trust to another the power which, as far as he himself was concerned, he used so unselfishly and so sparingly. There was a time when the splendor of his fame was very captivating to myself, as I dare say it was to thousands of other ambitious youths of the country. But you will believe me sincere when I tell you, paraphrasing the words of Tyndall upon Faraday, how lightly I hold the honor of being Prentice’s successor compared with the honor of having been Prentice’s friend. His friendship was energy and inspiration. His “mantle” is a burden I shall never pretend to carry.

  In person, Mr. Prentice was above the medium height. His head was finely shaped; his figure was erect, but his exceedingly sloping shoulders gave him rather a drooping appearance. He was dignified and elegant in his bearing, and graceful and natural in all his movements and actions. His hands and feet were unusually small; his face was round and full; his features were irregular, but not homely. His forehead was broad and high, and awed the beholder by its expression of intellectual vigor. His eyes were his finest feature; they were of a dark brown color, rather small, but lustrous and full of strange intelligence—

“Deep searching seen, and seeing from afar.”

His voice was low-toned and persuasive, but free as a fountain, it took the form of the conduit thought. He was one of the finest conversationalists I ever heard. It can be said of him, as was said of the little child in the fairy-story, that whenever he opened his mouth out came a pearl. He delivered no monologues. He never wearied his listeners, or insulted them by presuming upon their ignorance. He was as sparkling and brilliant at the table and in social circles as in the columns of his paper. The richness of his language was only equalled by the wit, humor, and philosophy of his thoughts and ideas.

  Mr. Prentice was often much the worse for liquor. I once saw him at a party, sitting on a sofa, with a gentleman sitting on each side, keeping him from falling over. Afterwards he took the pledge, and joined a temperance society. How it was in the last years of his life I never knew, but it is certain that cloud rested over his latter days. He lost the commanding position which he once occupied. He tried to maintain slavery and yet oppose the rebellion, but his position was not logical, and was necessarily a failure. The man who once seemed to direct the destinies of Kentucky with his pen, the leading journalist of the west, was at last only retained as a subordinate in the office which had been the scene of his great triumphs. So passes away the influence of any mind, however brilliant, which clings to no convictions, and holds to no universal ideas.

  He was an excellent talker, and being a thorough Greek and Latin scholar, as well as French and German, he was at home among his favorite poets, Virgil, Byron and Shelley. His favorite German author was Jean Paul Richter; he always read everything the latter wrote, and his advice to young writers was to adopt Richter’s style, if they must have a model.

  One of my teachers was George D. Prentice, the poet, who was born within a stone’s throw of me. He is better known as the witty editor of the Louisville Journal, now the Courier-Journal, managed by Henry Watterson. Many were the literary favors I received from Prentice. He was a graduate of Brown, an admirable instructor, a ripe scholar, had a wonderful memory, and was a skillful wrestler. I have seen him, on a wager, read two large pages in a strange book twice through, and then repeat them without a miss.

General

  The poetical compositions of Mr. Prentice were written several years since, and many of them while he was a member of college. They were published in the “Review,” and various other periodicals, but have never been collected. They have been very generally circulated, and have gained for their author, in its widest sense, a “newspaper reputation.” They are characterized at times by great strength of thought and expression, and at others by tender feeling and delicate fancy. If their author would devote more of his time to such composition, he might win for himself a high name among the sons of song.

  Whatever may be the sacrilege of giving utterance to such an opinion, I cannot forego saying, that in my estimation, George D. Prentice is one of the most perfect masters of blank verse in America, and that his writings in that style contain as much of the genuine element of genius in poetry as those of any of our countrymen. To such as question this decision, I can but refer to his two poems—one upon the “Flight of Years,” and his lines upon the “Mammoth Cave.” His “Dead Mariner,” and other rhymed pieces, evince how exquisite a master he is of versification. He has a fine musical ear, and the harmony of his numbers flows with the most mellifluous measure, while his verse is graced with diction as chaste as it is elegant. Every thing he preserves in the amber of his poesy is selected with unerring taste. What he has written as a poet only makes us wish for more.

  His poetry is of the highest and sweetest order. His “Lines at My Mother’s Grave” are among the most affecting, heartfelt expressions of love and sorrow ever uttered. They are the overflowings of a full heart which often throbs with fine and worthy sentiment. His poems are not very extensive, and of late years do not usually evince his old ardor…. His prose literary works are few. “A Life of Henry Clay” was written long ago, but never proved a success, and has now gone completely out of print. He lived with Clay at his home in Ashland for several months in order to complete the work, and became a bosom friend of the great statesman. He also published, about nine years ago, a book of witty paragraphs entitled, “Prenticeana,” but it was a tasteless rehash of the short witticisms that had appeared from time to time in the Journal, and which, being clipped of their personal or political bearing, lost their prominent points. The book proved a complete failure. He regretted seriously that he had ever permitted its publication, and protested strongly against the title, “Prenticeana” which his publishers, had substituted for his own more modest designation. He also had two or three lectures which he was in the habit of delivering during the season, but they were not in his best style and none of them claimed to be witty. On the contrary, they were dull and didactic. His audiences, from his general reputation, had a right to expect a bright, humorous discussion, and were consequently seriously disappointed on being treated to a dry essay on the aspect of American politics.

  I am disposed to think there is no other American poet, except Mr. Bryant, who has so finely handled blank verse as Mr. Prentice has done in several of his principal poems. His blank verse, indeed, occasionally suggests a resemblance to that of Mr. Bryant, although much more of emotional element and warmth of color—the visible life of human passion—are noticeable in it. He lacked that careful eye for the little half-secrets of Nature shown by Mr. Bryant, but his real love of Nature was no less true…. If “Thanatopsis” is Mr. Bryant’s representative poem in blank verse, “The Closing Year” may be said to be that of Mr. Prentice—it has long been so at least in popular regard. I do not know where there may be found a more stately and solemn meditation on the flight of Time, and the changes wrought thereby, than this poem presents; and I doubt if in English poetry there exists a more striking or loftier personification of Time, and allusion to his conquests, than its concluding lines afford.

  All men have their weaknesses. Poetry, or what he was kind enough to believe such, was one of Prentice’s weaknesses. In his youth, and later in life, he had done some very creditable versification, and on that account had been thrust before his time into the Southern Valhalla of song. He is entitled, perhaps, to a third rank among American poets; but, pushed into loftier company, the disharmony of his surroundings is unpleasantly apparent. He used to be greatly lauded for the incitement he had furnished to the wooers of the Muses. It is unfortunate that, with all their striving, not a single sister of the Nine was won. Prentice, from his amiability and over-appreciation, is responsible for a vast deal of the quantitative fustian that still goes to the provincial press, and, missing its way to the waste-basket, gets to the composing room.

  It is only six years since the author died; it is hardly sixteen since his “Closing Year” reappeared in many newspapers on every 31st of December. Yet, as we turn back to half-remembered poems and recall their former currency,—as we hear accents which are already beginning to sound strange to our ears, and scan with a sudden wonder forms of poetic expression once so welcome and familiar, the great gulf between free, self-asserting poetic genius, and poetic taste of even a very lofty and genuine character, is once more suggested. We do not know that Mr. Prentice ever claimed the title of poet; it was rather forced upon him by the many personal friends who heard in his verse the expression of the ardent, sincere, generous nature they loved. He never seemed to care especially—at least, not with the absorbing fondness and jealousy of the poets who feel their consecration—for the lyrics, in which the music of his emotions, rather than of his intellect or imagination, made itself heard. We can not judge him, therefore, according to the standard of artistic achievement; we must simply ask what he designed, and how far he has been successful therein.

  His best work was in dashes of from two to ten lines, each with a “fist.” The leaders were unrivaled as leaders, but they had not the keen sparkle of the inexhaustible Prentice paragraphs. His poems also had many fond readers, and he had a following of poets and poetesses whose efforts he carried with a few flattering and taking lines for each poetic gem; and it would have been unsafe to say that they were not all gems. There must have been at times a dozen ladies, each with the gift of song, contributing to the beautifully printed pages of the Journal of Louisville, and they never contributed lines, few or many, that they were not framed in words of editorial praise, always pleasant and felicitous; and the poetry of the paper was held to be as valuable an attraction as its politics.

  I cannot say that I knew George D. Prentice, although I have had conversations with him. It would be hard under present press conditions to make intelligible his exact position in journalism. We looked at him as an erratic, ever-shining star,—a wonder in the Southwestern skies. There seemed no end to his genius,—that daily stream of wit, comment, verse, the saying of the oddest things in ten lines, a style with the freshness of spring, gayety, courtesy, snapping fire when provoked, but always marked with humanity and patriotism. Prentice was an American whose Americanism spread from sea to sea. He was neither insular, parochial, nor mountain-hemmed. There was as much in the granite of Massachusetts or the Louisiana loam as in the blue-grass of Kentucky. The soil to be sacred had simply to be American. That Kentucky remained true to the Union was due to George D. Prentice. I thought of this with reverent gratitude to his memory as I stood by his grave, not so many years ago.

  Prentice delighted in giving pain with his caustic pen, and he used his great power of satire with reckless disregard of the feelings of his opponents.