Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/191

 1830-40.] THOMAS H. SHREVE. 175 cured by the publishers of the Louisville Journal as an assistant in the editorial depai'tment of that paper. In this employment he continued till the day of his death — dictating to an amanuensis months after the inroads of disease had so shattered his physical constitution that he could no longer guide the pen that traced his quickly- flowing thoughts. For the rough-and-tumble of political editorship he had but little taste, and he labored in that department of the paper only temporarily during the occasional absence of his able and dextrous senior. He liked as little the drudgery of clipping and paragraphing — to which he was subjected only at times of similar necessity. He was, more especially than any thing else, an essayist, and to the well- weighed thoughts and polished style of the " leaders " which he furnished every week, and sometimes every day, was the Loidsville Journal indebted for much of the high respect entertained for it among thoughtful and scholarly minds.* Some of Mr. Shreve's poetical compositions have been widely and justly admired. Unlike most young men, when they engage in metrical writing, he was as joyous in his verse as the lark soaring in the early morn and singing at' heaven's gate. As an amateur artist also he had decided and high excellences, and he left portraits, land- scapes, and paintings in animal life, which demonstrate his powers in this department of intellectual effort. He had likewise a mathematical and legal mind ; and had he given his days and nights as sedulously to either astronomy or law as he gave them to belles-lettres and the social circle, he would have ranked with the best of his cotemporaries. His ambition, however, was almost exclusively literary, and the theater of perhaps his best exploits was the club-room, where he had few equals in the cities of his residence. No man had stronger attachments to his friends than Thomas H. Shreve, and no man's friends have been more devoted than his to the object of their regard. This was the double result of his truthful and manly nature, which presented him at all which tiie following is an extract : •'Mr. Shreve's abilities were of a high order. As a writer, he was much distinguished before his connection with the Louisville Journal, and his pen contributed much valuable matter to this paper. His taste was pure, his humor was rich and exuberant, and he could, when he pleased, write with extraordinary vehemence, eloquence, and pathos. His mind was richly stored with knowledge, and he could always use that knowledge with wonderful facility. The condition of his health was such for the last two or three years that he wrote very little during that time, but he has left behind him some productions which we trust that our generation wUl not permit to be forgotten. "To-morrow the lamented Shreve will be laid in his grave amid the tears and sobs and lamentations of relatives and friends, but his memory, unburied in the earth, will remain a cherished and beautiful and hoi}' thing in the souls of hundreds. When such a man passes away, he leaves the earth lone and desolate to those who knew and loved him, but heaven becomes brighter to them than before. A dark and chilling shadow stretches from his tomb, and seems to envelop the heart and the whole world of nature with its cold gloom, but when the eye of the spirit looks upward and pursues him in his radiant and starry flight, the gloom vanishes, and all is eternal beauty and glory. " We, the surviving editor of the Journal, feel that the prime of our life is scarcely yet gone ; j-et, as we look back iil'On our long career in this city, we seem to behold, near and far, only the graves of the prized and the lost. All the numerous journeymen and apprentices that were In our employ when we first commenced publishing our paper are dead ; our first partner, our second partner, and our third pai-tner are dead, and our first assistant and our last assistant are also dead. When these memories come over us, we feel like one alone at midiiight in the midst of a churchyard, with the winds sighing mournfully around him through the broken tombs, and the voices of the ghosts of departed joys sounding dolefully in his ears. Our prayer to God is that such memories may have a chastening and purifying and elevating influence upon us and fit us to discharge, better than we have ever .yet done, our duties to earth and to heaven." ,
 * On the morning after his death, a touching article from the pen of Mr. Pi'entice appeared in the Joicrnal — from