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).