Note 100 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
A very hostile account of him is given in Dict. of Nat. Biog. He was, however, the friend of Cowley, and the “M. Clifford” to whom Sprat addressed his sketch of Cowley’s Life. He was also a foe of Dryden—the “malicious Matt Clifford” of Dryden’s Sessions of the Poets; and he attacked the poet in Notes on Dryden’s Poems (published 1687), and is supposed to have had a hand in the Rehearsal. He was befriended by Shaftesbury. ↑