As a
poet, he would have equalled Homer; as a lawyer, the author of the
Pandects; as an architect, Michael Angelo; as an astronomer, Newton or
Galileo; as an actor, Garrick, or his beloved Talma--as he had equalled
Caesar and Hannibal, and greatly surpassed Marlborough, Frederick the
Great, and Charles XII.; as an orator, Demosthenes; and as a statesman,
the greatest the earth ever knew.
This combination in the mind of Prentiss, with the great development of
the organ of language, made him the unrivalled orator of his age. His
powers of memory were so great as to astonish even those eminently
gifted in the same manner. In reading, he involuntarily committed to
memory, whether of prose or poetry. He seemed to have memorized the
Bible, Shakspeare, Dryden, Ben Jonson, Byron, and many others of the
modern poets. The whole range of literature was at his command: to read
once, was always to remember. This capacity to acquire was so great
that he would in a month master as much as most men could in twelve.
It appeared immaterial to what he applied himself, the consequence was
the same.
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