Boker, George Henry

Boker, George Henry 1842 (1823-1890), a founder and the first editor of the Nassau Monthly (as the Lit was called in its early years), was tall, handsome, and patrician, with, a friend thought, ``the form of Apollo and a head the counterpart of the bust of Byron.'' He was the College's best poet since Philip Freneau 1771, and an equally ardent patriot: ``If there is one offence in a nation, which we should willingly forgive,'' he said in one of his contributions to the Nassau Monthly, ``it is the undue pride and admiration of its great men.''

In later life he published two volumes of poetry, wrote a number of plays, six of which were produced, and served as United States Minister to Turkey and to Russia. His most successful play was the verse tragedy, Francesca da Rimini, based on the story of Paolo and Francesca; it was first produced in 1855 and revived, with great acclaim, in 1882 and 1901. Most widely known of the patriotic verse he wrote during the Civil War was his ``Black Regiment'' (celebrating the charge of the Negro troops at Port Hudson in 1863), which moved Oliver Wendell Holmes to write him an enthusiastic note of praise.

Boker's poem, ``Our Heroic Themes,'' which he read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard on July 20, 1865, contained one of the earliest tributes to Abraham Lincoln. It concluded:

''No king this man, by grace of God's intent:
No, something better, freemen, -President!
A nature modelled on a higher plan,
Lord of himself, an inborn gentleman!''

From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).

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