beneath our shifting skies, Where fancy sickens, and where genius dies; And no fine fancy riots in the veins; There still are found A FEW to whom belong But in the midst of all these hopes and expectations, those consumptive complaints with which he had long been threatened, assumed a more determinate form. After struggling for a short time with the disease, he died in December, 1799, in the twentyseventh year of his age. His poems, which are, as has been already intimated, chiefly occasional, were collected and published in one small volume,12mo, New-York, 1800. A very small edition was printed; the form was inelegant and uninviting; the subjects are generally of local or temporary interest; the period at which it was published was not very auspicious to literature, and from these and other causes, the book is now scarcely known among the readers of poetry. Although the volume, considered as a whole, is undoubtedly rather of high promise than of great performance, yet it contains, I think, many passages of singular beauty, and fully proves, that the mind of the author was rapidly advancing "to further ends more excellent." In the poems written in the earlier part of his short literary life, particularly a local satire entitled "The Group," he appears to have formed his taste altogether upon the political anu controversial poetry of Dryden, and displays much of his vigour, and too often not a little of his coarseness.. Either from impatience of the labour of critical revision, or from his imperfect command of the diction and mechanical part of poetical composition, his thoughts are often expressed in a manner crowded and indistinct, so that the reader is frequently puzzled by a sort of enigmatical obscurity. In his efforts at compression he often contents himself with elliptical phrases, which leave the sense in doubt. In struggling to attain energy, he is betrayed sometimes into strained, and sometimes into gross expressions. From these causes he is frequently, as has been observed of some of the old English poets, "hard of conceit and harsh of style." But all these are the natural faults of a young poet who VOL. III. New Series. 61 thinks for himself, and is not content to express trite ideas and traditionary images in that ordinary and common-place language of poetry, which has been chimed over and over to different tunes, till at length the manufacture of verses has become as mechanical as the turning of a hand organ. Dryden, in speaking of one of the fathers of English verse, has some lines which are singularly applicable to the earlier poetry of Clifton. "O early ripe! to thy abundant store What could advancing age have added more? But in his later poems this mist of obscurity seems rapidly clearing away. The epistle to Mr. Gifford, which appears to be the only piece in the collection which had undergone any very scrupulous revision, for spirit and animation, for rich luxuriance of poetical ornament and diction, for vigorous condensation of brilliant thought and happy boldness of phrase, as well as for purity and richness of versification, may be fairly placed in competition with any of the satiric poetry of the age. This poem, having been originally published anonymously in the first American edition of Mr. Gifford's poems, and afterwards reprinted in several fugitive publications, is better known than any other of Mr. Clifton's productions, and has been read and admired by many to whom the name of the author is probably altogether unknown. The following similes are selected, not for their peculiar beauty, for the whole poem is of a very uniform and sustained excellence, but as a fair specimen of its general style and manner. After describing the severe intellectual discipline by which the ancient scholars were formed, when Patience and perseverance, care and pain, The weak were baffled while the strong were crown'd. and placing it in vivid contrast with the mushroom precocity, with which authors now spring up, he adds, "So the sage oak, to nature's mandate true, When steadfast were its roots, and sound its heart, It bade defiance to the insect's art, And, storm and time resisting, still remains "Then, if some thoughtless Bavius dared appear, Then droops its empty, hated head, and dies." As the other pieces in this collection are very little known, most of my readers will probably be gratified by a selection of a few of his happier effusions; and although these and some other pasages of equal excellence stand in very bold relief among many careless and inferior verses which accompany them, they will yet, I trust, be sufficient to show us how much of poetical talent and taste was lost to the world by the untimely death of this young poet, who, haply, had he survived, might, under more favourable auspices, have proved the American Dryden. In the Chimeriad, the genius of false philosophy is personified with much spirit and boldness of imagination under the character of the witch Chimeria. The following passage is brilliant in fancy and rich in thought, though in some of the lines the idea is not brought out with sufficient distinctness, and the expression is occasionally harsh and obscure. "In times of old, ere yet the sacred page Display'd its treasures to a graceless age, When from his fields and flocks first urg'd to roam With maniac flight, through pathless skies pursu'd, Which gave the building all its strength and grace, And pass'd on banks of bad delight the day, It is doubtless remembered that the adjustment of differences with France, in 1799, whatever may now be thought of the policy of the measure, was at the time received with great disgust by many generous spirits to whom the honour of their country was dearer than its immediate interests. Among this number was Mr. Clifton. The following lines, alluding to that event, contain a very fine burst of poetical indignation. The simile, "So Satan," &c. will probably recall to the memory some celebrated couplets in Otway's Orphan, which it strongly resembles in spirit and flow of versification. The bitter smile of angry contempt which the poet assumes in the last lines, their mixture of sprightly sarcasm, and lofty indignation, are in the very spirit of Juvenal. "Infatuate men, ah! what avails your boast, Your rising navy, and your guarded coast, For soon the spoiler comes, with wanton wiles, With quips, and cranks, and nods, and wreathed smiles," And lays your freedom and your honour low. So the poor girl whose bold seducer flies, With steps too rude to seize the virgin prize, Frowns on the wretch who dar'd invade her charms, |