Born at Yafforth Hall, Northallerton, the son of a Roundhead gentleman who was hanged at York in 1664, studied at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, and entered Gray’s Inn in 1666. He published translations, critical discussions on poetry, dramas, and works on history, and in 1692 was appointed historiographer royal. Pope considered him “one of the best critics we ever had;” Macaulay, “the worst critic that ever lived.” His principal critical work is “The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered” (1678); but he is chiefly remembered as the compiler of the invaluable collection of historical materials known as the “Fœdera,” extending from the 11th century to his own time. Vols. i–xv. were published in 1704–13, vols. xvi, xx, in 1715–35, a third edition (incomplete) of the Record Commission in 1816–30, and Sir Thomas Hardy’s “Syllabus” of the whole in 1869–85.

Personal

  Of Rymer’s personal character and the circumstances of his life at the time of his appointment to this important post, we know comparatively nothing. That he lived in an honourable intimacy with Hobbes and Waller there is no doubt, and that he addressed Bishop Nicolson as his “old acquaintance” is equally clear. Familiar allusions to various members of several noble families are scattered throughout his writings, and John Dunton styles him the “orthodox and modest Rymer.” Dr. Smith thought well of him, and George Stephney numbered him amongst his friends. In Thoresby’s Diary he is alluded to, some years later, as “good old Mr. Rymer;” and Bishop Kennett, writing after his death, mentions him with respect.

Fœdera

  This great work we have from Thomas Rymer, Historiographer Royal, commanded and supported by Her Majesty; and it may justly be reckoned one of the many glories of her reign.

  No historical student can possibly proceed with his labours, nor is any historical library complete, without this invaluable collection. The Hague edition may be recommended as the most convenient and valuable.

  Compiler of Carlyle’s favourite butt, Rymer’s “Fœdera.”

  In the year 1693, mainly, it would appear, at the suggestion of the eminent statesmen, Somers and Halifax, Thomas Rymer, in his capacity of historiographer royal, was appointed to transcribe and publish all the leagues, treaties, alliances, capitulations, and confederacies which had, at any time, been made between the Crown of England and other kingdoms. As the result of these instructions there successively appeared, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the volumes of his well-known “Fœdera,” the series being continued by his assistant, Robert Sanderson, in the year 1735. The work, as it issued from the press, attracted considerable attention both at home and on the Continent, and, though severely criticised, has generally been admitted to be a collection of the highest value and authority. It commences with the reign of Henry I. (ann. 1134), and extends to 1654. A new edition, published at the Hague, 1737–45, is of greatly superior typographical accuracy; while the utility of the collection to students has been much enhanced by the Syllabus of the work by the late Sir T. D. Hardy.

  Rymer the Dryasdust, however, cannot quite forget Rymer the Longinus; his work is graced with a Latin address to Queen Anne, more like a dithyrambic than a dedication.

  Though defective at some points, and defaced by errors of date and by many misprints, Rymer’s “Fœdera” remains a collection of high value and authority for almost all periods of the middle ages and for the sixteenth century. For the period of the Commonwealth the work is meagre, and Dumont’s “Corps Universel Diplomatique” (8 vols. 1726) is for that epoch an indispensable supplement.

General

  You see what success this learned critick has found in the world, after his blaspheming Shakspeare. Almost all the faults which he has discovered are truly there; yet who will read Mr. Rymer, or not read Shakspeare? For my own part I reverence Mr. Rymer’s learning, but I detest his ill-nature and his arrogance. I indeed, and such as I, have reason to be afraid of him, but Shakspeare has not.

  “Rymer a learned and strict critic?”—Ay, that’s exactly his character. He is generally right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had.

  The different manner and effect with which critical knowledge may be conveyed, was perhaps never more clearly exemplified than in the performances of Rymer and Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians, “malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte sapere;” that “it was more eligible to go wrong with one, than right with the other.” A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the perusal of Dryden’s prefaces and Rymer’s discourses. With Dryden we are wandering in quest of Truth; whom we find, if we find her at all, drest in the graces of elegance; and, if we miss her, the labour of the pursuit rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made through thorns and brambles; and Truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden’s criticism has the majesty of a queen; Rymer’s has the ferocity of a tyrant.

  Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice cannot be punished too severely, and that the poet ought to leave his victims objects of pity, he protests against the introduction of very wicked characters…. Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet’s characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given—such a degree of sorrow, and no more ought a character to endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons very beautifully on his own poetic decalogue…. Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for the poetical prerogatives of kings. No courtier ever contended more strenuously for their divine right in real life, than he for their pre-eminence in tragedy.

  The worst critic that ever lived.

  Rymer, however, was a ripe scholar, and the founder, in our literature, of what has been considered as the French or the classical school of criticism; and he has won the unlucky distinction of being designated as “Shakespeare’s critic!”

  Thomas Rymer and John Dennis may be regarded as the first regular and professional critics, and, apart from the fact that they were contemporaries, resemble one another in many respects. Each was a man of considerable ability, each passed through a University curriculum, each was maddened by a furious zeal for the honour of tragedy, and each, after a checquered career in which poverty, criticism, and ill-temper strongly obtained, died, if not quite “unknelled, uncoffined and unknown,” at all events unregretted. The latent “ferocity” of the two men became active and aggressive so soon as they touched upon the subject of Shakespeare’s plays, which, indeed, in the nineteenth century as in the eighteenth, have formed the happy hunting-grounds of a few incipient madmen and American “theorizers.” Thoroughly recognizing the value of illustrating their precepts by examples, both Rymer and Dennis proved—as the Abbé d’Aubignac had proved—by their own plays the unutterable stupidity and lifeless character of these precepts. Amid all the rubbish and pathos which the last two centuries have to answer for in the shape of dramatic works, it is certain that the ultima Thule of absurdity was reached when such men as Banks, Rymer, and Dennis proclaimed themselves heaven-born writers of tragedy.

  It would be unfair to Rymer to make of him nothing but a shocking example. A little grain of imagination leavens all his criticism. His admiration for the Greeks is not pretence; he knows the difference between Euripides and Seneca, and his description of the character of Phædra, as represented by the Greek and by the Latin tragic poet, is sensible. None of his critical writing is hard to read. His plan of a tragedy of “The Invincible Armado,” on the classical model, to compete with the Persians of Æschylus, will hold its own, though nothing but an outline, against the more romantic tragedy of “Tilburina.” The plan of the fourth act—the old dames of the Court “alarming our gentlemen with new apprehensions”—is not less pleasant to meditate upon than the inventions of Sheridan’s Tragedy Rehearsed. Dennis, in his remarks on Rymer, took this seriously, but Rymer is not quite free from malice in his commendation of his classical play.