George Dennison Prentice
briand, Sheridan and Byron and Maurice of Saxe, 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 Diderot and Richter were in the
fight for free opinions; what the friend of Madame
Recamier was in letters and diplomacy; what Sheridan
was in the Commons; what Byron and Tasso and Mau-
rice of Saxe were in the airy world of adventure, half
actual and half myth-Prentice was to the press. But
mention of his name, like mention of the others, does
not recall the broils and battles in which he engaged;
nor does it suggest those hard and dry realities, which,
in common with his fellow-men, he had to encounter
and endure.  Much the reverse.   It tells us of the
princely and the splendid, the pleasant and the fanciful;
and because of this many persons have erroneously con-
ceived his work to have been as the play of others,
idealizing him as one whose genius was so scintillating
and abundant that its flashes fell from him in spite of
himself, like the stars that were cast from the armor of
the magic buckler in the legend.   Scintillant and
abundant he was, but also a rare scholar and a pro-
digious drudge-overflowing with both the energy and
the poetry of life-admirably poised and balanced by
the two forces which we understand as imagination
and intellect. Burke's description of Charles Townsend
seems a not inept sketch of George D. Prentice. I am
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