GEORGE D. PRENTICE
Reading edition
George Dennison Prentice, poet, editor, wit, and founder of the Journal School of Female Poets, was born at Preston, Connecticut, December 18, 1802. In the fall of 1820 Prentice entered the Sophomore class of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, where one of his instructors was Horace Mann, and among his classmates was Samuel G. Howe. At college he was famous for his prodigious memory. Prentice was graduated from Brown in 1823, after which he taught school for some time. He next turned to the law, but this he also abandoned to enter upon his life work—journalism. In 1827 he became editor of a paper in New London, Connecticut, but in the following year he went to Hartford to take charge of the New England Review, which "was the Louisville Journal, born in Connecticut." In 1830 the Connecticut Whigs requested Prentice to journey to Kentucky and prepare a campaign life of Henry Clay. He finally decided to do this, naming John Greenleaf Whittier, the good Quaker poet, as his successor in the editorial chair of The Review, and setting out at once upon his long pilgrimage to Lexington. He dashed off his biography of the statesman in a few months, and it greatly pleased the Whigs of his State, but Prentice had decided to remain in Kentucky. He went to Louisville, and on November 24, 1830, the first issue of the Louisville Journal appeared, and George D. Prentice had at last come into his very own. His pungent paragraphs made the "Yankee schoolmaster" feared by editors in the remotest corners of the country, but more especially by Shadrach Penn, editor of the Louisville Advertiser, the Democratic organ, as the Journal was the Whig organ. After a constant warfare of more than ten years, poor Penn capitulated, and removed to Missouri. Prentice found another foe worthy of his steel in John H. Harney, editor of the Louisville Daily Democrat, but the battle of the wits between them was not as keen as it was between him and Penn. Prentice survived both editors and wrote exquisite eulogies upon them! He also had many personal encounters, which his biographer, Mr. John James Piatt, the Ohio poet, declines to dignify with the term of "duel." His pistol "brush" with Col Reuben T. Durrett, the Kentucky historical writer and collector, was, perhaps, his most serious affair. And the colonel lived to write a fine tribute to him, which was turning the tables upon him just a bit! Prentice's home in Louisville was the center of the city's literary life for many years. His wife was a charming and cultured woman, in every way fitted to assist him. A volume of his witty paragraphs, called by the publishers, Prenticeana (New York, 1859), attracted attention in London and Paris, and in all parts of the United States. Next to Whig politics, the Journal was the literary newspaper of the country. All Western and Southern poets were welcomed to its columns, particularly were female poets "featured," and upon them all Prentice poured out indiscriminate praise, which may or may not have been good for them or for the public. At any rate, he never failed to send a kindly letter to each new "discovery," in which their work already submitted was extravagantly valued, and in which they were urged to flood the office with more of the same kind. His praise of Amelia B. Welby, the sentimental singer of the long ago, seems indefensible to-day. As a poet himself Prentice was a master of blank verse forms. Mr. Piatt put him next to Bryant among American poets in the handling of this difficult measure. The Closing Year, written in 1835, is undoubtedly his finest poem; and At My Mother's Grave is usually set beside it. Although his sons, wife, and most of his friends sympathized with the South in the war of Sections, Prentice was always an ardent advocate of the Union cause. He died near Louisville, on the banks of the Ohio river, January 22, 1870. Henry Watterson delivered an eulogy upon him, and snugly adjusted his mantle about his own shoulders.
Bibliography. The Poems of George D. Prentice, edited by John J. Piatt (Cincinnati, 1878); The Pioneer Press of Kentucky, by W. H. Perrin (Louisville, 1888).
THE CLOSING YEAR
[From The Poems of George D. Prentice, edited with a Biographical Sketch, by John J. Piatt (Cincinnati, 1878, 4th Edition)]
'Tis midnight's holy hour—and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell Of the departed Year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest, Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand— Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks—and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead Year, Gone from the earth forever. 'Tis a time For memory and for tears. Within the deep, Still chambers of the heart, a specter dim, Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold And solemn finger to the beautiful And holy visions that have passed away And left no shadow of their loveliness On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love, And, bending mournfully above the pale Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers O'er what has passed to nothingness. The Year Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course, It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful, And they are not. It laid its pallid hand Upon the strong man, and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle-plain, where sword and spear and shield Flashed in the light of midday—and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, It heralded its millions to their home In the dim land of dreams. Remorseless Time!— Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!—what power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity? On, still on He presses, and forever. The proud bird, The condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northern hurricane And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain-crag—but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink, Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles Spring, blazing, from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations; and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away, To darkle in the trackless void: yet Time, Time the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.
ON REVISITING BROWN UNIVERSITY
[From the same]
It is the noon of night. On this calm spot, Where passed my boyhood's years, I sit me down To wander through the dim world of the Past. The Past! the silent Past! pale Memory kneels Beside her shadowy urn, and with a deep And voiceless sorrow weeps above the grave Of beautiful affections. Her lone harp Lies broken at her feet, and as the wind Goes o'er its moldering chords, a dirge-like sound Rises upon the air, and all again Is an unbreathing silence. Oh, the Past! Its spirit as a mournful presence lives In every ray that gilds those ancient spires, And like a low and melancholy wind Comes o'er yon distant wood, and faintly breathes Upon my fevered spirit. Here I roved Ere I had fancied aught of life beyond The poet's twilight imaging. Those years Come o'er me like the breath of fading flowers, And tones I loved fall on my heart as dew Upon the withered rose-leaf. They were years When the rich sunlight blossomed in the air, And fancy, like a blessed rainbow, spanned The waves of Time, and joyous thoughts went off Upon its beautiful unpillared arch To revel there in cloud, and sun, and sky. Within yon silent domes, how many hearts Are beating high with glorious dreams. 'Tis well; The rosy sunlight of the morn should not Be darkened by the portents of the storm That may not burst till eve. Those youthful ones Whose thoughts are woven of the hues of heaven, May see their visions fading tint by tint, Till naught is left upon the darkened air Save the gray winter cloud; the brilliant star That glitters now upon their happy lives May redden to a scorching flame and burn Their every hope to dust; yet why should thoughts Of coming sorrows cloud their hearts' bright depths With an untimely shade? Dream on—dream on, Ye thoughtless ones—dream on while yet ye may! When life is but a shadow, tear, and sigh, Ye will turn back to linger round these hours Like stricken pilgrims, and their music sweet Will be a dear though melancholy tone In Memory's ear, sounding forever more.
PRENTICE PARAGRAPHS
[From Prenticeana (New York, 1859)]
James Ray and John Parr have started a locofoco paper in Maine, called the Democrat. Parr, in all that pertains to decency, is below zero; and Ray is below Parr.
The editor of the —— speaks of his "lying curled up in bed these cold mornings." This verifies what we said of him some time ago—"he lies like a dog."
A young widow has established a pistol gallery in New Orleans. Her qualifications as a teacher of the art of duelling are of course undoubted; she has killed her man.
Wild rye and wild wheat grow in some regions spontaneously. We believe that wild oats are always sown.
"What would you do, madam, if you were a gentleman?" "Sir, what would you do if you were one?"
Whatever Midas touched was turned into gold; in these days, touch a man with gold and he'll turn into anything.