Meanwhile, this avowed preference of his own period excited the resentment of the older critics, who had looked up to the era of Shakespeare as the golden age of poetry; and no less that of the playwrights of his own standing, who pretended to discover that Dryden designed to establish less the reputation of his age, than of himself individually upon the ruined fame of the ancient poets. They complained that, as the wild bull in the Vivarambla of Granada, "monarch-like he ranged the listed field, And some he trampled down, and some he kill'd." Many, therefore, advancing, under pretence of vindicating the fame of the ancients, gratified their spleen by attacking that of Dryden, and strove less to combat his criticisms, than to criticise his productions. We shall have too frequent occasion to observe, that there was, during the reign of Charles II., a semi-barbarous virulence of controversy, even upon abstract points of literature, which would be now thought injudicious and unfair, even by the newspaper advocates of contending factions. A critic of that time never deemed he had so effectually refuted the reasoning of his adversary, as when he had said something disrespectful of his talents, person, or moral character. Thus, literary contest was embittered by personal hatred, and truth was so far from being the object of the combatants that even victory was tasteless unless obtained by the disgrace and degradation of the antagonist. This reflection may serve to introduce a short detail of the abusive controversies in which it was Dryden's lot to be engaged. One of those who most fiercely attacked our author's system and opinions was Matthew[19] Clifford, already mentioned as engaged in the "Rehearsal." At what precise time he began his Notes upon Dryden's Poems, in Four Letters, or how they were originally published, is uncertain. The last of the letters is dated from the Charter-House 1st July 1672, and is signed with his name: probably the others were written shortly before. The only edition now known was printed along with some "Reflections on the Hind and Panther, by another Hand" (Tom Brown), in 1687. If these letters were not actually printed in 1672, they were probably successively made public by transcripts handed about in the coffee-houses which was an usual mode of circulating lampoons and pieces of satire. Although Clifford was esteemed a man of wit and a scholar, his style is rude, coarse, and ungentlemanlike, and the criticism is chiefly verbal. In the note the reader may peruse an ample specimen of the kind of wit, or rather banter, employed by this facetious person.[20] The letters were written successively at different periods; for Clifford in the last complains that he cannot extort an answer, and therefore seems to conceive that his arguments are unanswerable.