Exotics in and out of genial soil

 

I. F. — Bah! Better continue your catalogue raisonneé of newspapers. What immense sheet is that?

The Weekly Louisville Journal; an excellent farmer's paper. Prentice has a characteristic quality which now needs a name—better than repartee writer. But, heaven and earth! he is the best abuser too of his time—an exotic in a genial soil." 

--Sept. 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

There he sits, a strange exotic, transplanted from the delectable alcoves of the old manorial mansion, to take root in this niggard soil. No more do the sweet purple airs of the hills round about the green fields of Saddle Meadows come revivingly wafted to his cheek. Like a flower he feels the change; his bloom is gone from his cheek; his cheek is wilted and pale.  --Melivlle's Pierre - 1852

So George Dennison Prentice is really a transplanted Yankee, Connecticut-born but now thriving in the genial southern soil of Kentucky. Interesting that Melville similarly equates "genial" with "southern":

But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge, experience — were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but unknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him.
--The Confidence-Man - 1857

But already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil of my Southern soul.  --Melville's 1850 revew-essay Hawthorne and His Mosses

"... this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the lively quarry bounds before you through leafy glades." --Melville, Mardi  - 1849

One person whom Prentice had abused in print was Herman Melville's older brother Gansevoort. Herman's younger brother Allan told him so in October 1844, as Hershel Parker reports:

The opposition have of course made their attacks upon him [Gansevoort Melville] & some of them are very severe. Prentiss the witty editor of the Louisville Journal was right down upon him.  --Herman Melville: A Biography V1.314

But what ’s the theme? The theme was bent—
Be sure, in no dry argument—
On the Picturesque, what ’tis—its essence,
Fibre and root, bud, efflorescence,
Congenial soil, and where at best....  

--Herman Melville, At the Hostelry

"George D. Prentice was a Connecticut Yankee, by birth, but in his brilliant career he was a Southerner by residence and characteristics. Born in 1802, a graduate of Brown University in 1823, a New England editor until 1830, he began to build the monument of his fame in the latter year at Louisville, Kentucky, where for over thirty years he edited the Louisville Journal, and made it conspicuous for its wit. He wrote some beautiful poetry, but his forte was repartee. The pungency of this prince of paragraphers has never been surpassed. There has never been a journalist who could dash off more felicitous rejoinders than George D. Prentice. A strong Whig, he loved the South and the Union with about equal devotion. The last decade of his life was saddened by the conflict between the North and the South, and also by his own increasing weakness for strong drink. He lives in the admiration of those who remember his sallies of wit, but permanent literature will soon pass him by, forgetful, perhaps, of his very name. Some of his poems, however, are replete with lofty sentiment, elegantly expressed. Mr. Prentice died in 1870."

--Frank Gilbert, American Literature