GEORGE D. PRENTICE (1802-1870) was a native of Connecticut. He was
educated at Brown University, and studied law; but he soon gave up his
profession for the more congenial pursuit of literature. In 1828 he
established at Hartford the _New England Weekly Review_, in which a
number of his poems, serious and sentimental, appeared. Two years later,
at the age of twenty-eight, he turned over his paper to Whittier and
removed to Louisville, where he became editor of the _Journal_.

He was a man of brilliant intellect, and soon made his paper a power in
education, society, and politics. Apart from his own vigorous
contributions, he made his paper useful to Southern letters by
encouraging literary activity in others. It was chiefly through his
influence that Louisville became one of the literary centers of the
South. He was a stout opponent of secession; and when the Civil War came
his paper, like his adopted state, suffered severely.

Among his writings is a _Life of Henry Clay_. A collection of his witty
and pungent paragraphs has also been published under the title of
_Prenticeana_. His poems, by which he will be longest remembered, were
collected after his death. His best-known poem is _The Closing Year_.
Though its vividness and eloquence are quite remarkable, its style
is, perhaps, too declamatory for the taste of the present generation.
The following lines, which express the poet's bright hopes for the
political future of the world, are taken from _The Flight of Years_:--

"Weep not, that Time
Is passing on--it will ere long reveal
A brighter era to the nations. Hark!