Thomas Rymer
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Thomas Rymer (1641 - December 14, 1713), English historiographer royal, was the younger son of Ralph Rymer, lord of the manor of Brafferton in Yorkshire, described by Clarendon as possessed of a good estate, and executed for his share in the Presbyterian rising of 1663.
Thomas was probably born at Yafforth Hall early in 1641, and was educated at a private school kept at Danby-Wiske by Thomas Smelt, a noted Royalist, with whom Rymer was a great favorite, and well known for his great critical skill in human learning, especially in poetryand history. He was admitted as pensionarius minor at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on April 29, 1658, but left the university without taking a degree. On May 2, 1666, he became a member of Gray's Inn, and was called to the bar on June 16, 1673.
His first appearance in print was as translator of Cicero's Prince (1668), from the Latin treatise (1608) drawn up for Prince Henry. He also translated Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie (1674), with a preface in defence of the classical rules for unity in the drama, and followed the principles there set forth in a tragedy in verse, licensed September 13, 1677, called Edgar, or the English Monarch, which was a failure. The printed editions of 1678, 1691 and 1693 belong to the same issue, with new title-pages.
Rymer's views on the drama were again given to the world in the shape of a printed letter to Fleetwood Shepheard, the friend of Prior, under the title of The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider'd (1678, 2nd ed. 1692). To Ovid's Epistles Translated by Several Hands (1680), with preface by Dryden, Penelope to Ulysses was contributed by Rymer, who was also one of the hands who Englished the Plutarch of 1683-86. The life of Nicias fell to his share. He furnished a preface to Whitelocke's Memorials of English Affairs (1682), and wrote in 1681 A General Draught and Prospect of the Government of Europe, reprinted in 1689 and 1714 as Of the Antiquity, Power, and Decay of Parliaments, where, ignorant of his future dignity, the critic had the misfortune to observe, "You are not to expect truth from an historiographer royal."
He contributed three pieces to the collection of Poems to the Memory of Edmund Waller (1688), afterwards reprinted in Dryden's Miscellany Poems, and is said to have written the Latin inscription on Waller's monument in Beaconsfield churchyard. The preface to the posthumous Historia Ecclesiastica (1688) of Thomas Hobbes is said to have been by Rymer, but the Life of Hobbes (1681) sometimes ascribed to him was written by Richard Blackburne. He produced a congratulatory poem upon the arrival of Queen Mary in 1689.
His next piece of authorship was to translate the sixth elegy of the third book of Ovid's Tristia for Dryden's Miscellany Poems (1692, p. 148). On the death of Thomas Shadwell in 1692 Rymer received the appointment of historiographer royal, at a yearly salary of £200. Immediately afterwards appeared his much discussed Short View of Tragedy (1693), criticizing Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which produced The Imperial Critick (1693) of Dennis, the epigram of Dryden.