William Cliffton

Background

William Cliffton was born of Quaker stock in 1772 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. His father was a “wealthy mechanic” of Southwark who perhaps had an interest in shipbuilding.

Career

Cliffton was well educated, but of delicate frame, and the rupture of a blood-vessel at the age of nineteen caused him to abandon hopes of an active commercial career. Possessed of a competency, he seems to have devoted the rest of his brief life to literary and social pursuits. Possessed of a competency, he seems to have devoted the rest of his brief life to literary and social pursuits. Though living a retired life, Cliffton could not escape the political excitement of his times, and sided naturally enough with the more conservative party in Pennsylvania, which supported Washington, and favored the mother-country England in her struggle with regicide, Jacobin, and free- thinking France. When the more radical politicians were urging the United States to join France against Great Britain, Cliffton was a member of the Anchor Club, a small band of literary gentlemen who met for social purposes and to advocate war with France. For this body he wrote some prose papers upon the necessity of an established American navy and “Some Account of a Manuscript entitled Talleyrand’s Descent into Hell”—a mixture of prose and verse, which pictures the pains of the revolutionary leaders in the next world, and the happiness of the martyr Louis XVI in Elysium. The Anchor Club soon dissolved.

Cliffton wrote other poems—chief among them The Group (1796). It is a savage attack on Gallatin, containing much of the wit and coarseness to he expected in a follower of Pope and Churchill. “Rhapsody on the Times” recounts the adventures of an Irish agitator who is kicked into the water for his pains in pointing out the faults of America to some citizens—all showing the influence of Peter Pindar’s Odes and the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. “The Chimeriad” is a satire on the ideal republics, so pleasing in the books of philosophers, that they have been happily left there.

“The Address of the Devil to the United Irishmen, ” and their “Reply, ” poems first printed in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, wittily parody the style of councils with the Indians—instead of belts of wampum the chieftain of Hell and his earthly followers exchange halters, and “strings of lies and blasphemies. ”

Upon Lord Nelson’s victory of the Nile, Cliffton wrote a “Song” to the “hearts of oak, ” to be sung at a Philadelphia festival. It shows considerable lyric gift, as does the warlike “Soul of Columbia. ” For the Philadelphia edition of William Gifford’s Baviad and Maeviad, Cliffton wrote an introductory “Epistle” to the critic author, a piece showing his poetic gifts of smooth and forceful verse at their best. It is dated May 13, 1799.

In December Cliffton died at the age of twenty- seven. A collected volume of Poems, Chiefly Occasional, was printed at New York the next year.

Achievements

• Cliffton had more feeling, more quality than any other American writer of his day and though inferior in genius to Drake and E. C. Pinkney, he ranks with them among the chief losses to American literature by early death. Among his most famouse works was his poem The Group, which was published as a pamphlet at Philadelphia in 1796.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The group: or An elegant representation illustrated. Embellished with a beautiful head of S. Verges, C.S.

    (The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)

  • Poems, Chiefly Occasional, by the Late Mr. Cliffton: To Which Are Prefixed, Introductory Notices of the Life, Character and Writings, of the Author, and an Engraved Likeness (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Poems, Chiefly Occasional, by the Late Mr. C...)

  • The Baviad, And Mæviad

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Membership

Cliffton was the member of the Anchor Club.

Personality

Cliffton was a skilled musician, and an accomplished painter. He was of medium height, well-proportioned, his eye was animated, and his face handsome.

Interests

• Cliffton's favorite pleasure was shooting.

References

• The Chronology of American Literature: America's Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern Times