Rymer, vol. i. p. 15.]

Rymer, vol. i. p. 33.]

The same strange paper is in Rymer, vol.

[FN [n] Rymer, vol.

Rymer, vol. i. p. 39.

[FN [k] Rymer, vol.

[r] Rymer, vol.

Rymer, vol. i. p. 81.]

[x] Rymer, vol. i. p. 84.]

Rymer, vol. i. p. 94.

Rymer, vol i p. 66, 68. Bened.

Rymer, vol. i. p. 117, 118, 119.

Poets there were before Chaucer,vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,but search Rymer from cord to clasp and you shall find no documentary evidence of any one of them wearing the leaf or receiving the stipend distinctive of the place.

Chaucer, as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr Rymer, first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provençal, which was then the most polished of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen.

This dedication indicates, that a quarrel was commenced between our author and the critic Rymer.

It appears from a passage in a letter to Tonson, that Rymer had spoken lightly of him in his last critique (probably in the short view of tragedy), and that the poet took this opportunity, as he himself expresses it, to snarl again.

He therefore acquaints us roundly, that the corruption of a poet was the generation of a critic; exults a little over the memory of Rymer's "Edgar," a tragedy just reeking from damnation; and hints at the difference which the public is likely to experience between the present royal historiographer and him whose room he occupied.

In his epistle to Congreve, alluding to the same circumstance of Rymer's succeeding to the office of historiographer, as Tate did to the laurel, on the death of Thomas Shadwell, in 1692, Dryden has these humorous lines: "O that your brows my laurel had sustained!

" From the letter to Tonson above referred to, it would seem that the dedication of the Third Miscellany gave offence to Queen Mary, being understood to reflect upon her government, and that she had commanded Rymer to return to the charge, by a criticism on Dryden's plays.

But the breach does not appear to have become wider; and Dryden has elsewhere mentioned Rymer with civility.

Another story was that of good old Mr. Randal Rymer, who was often a visitor at the house in the late Lady Mardykes' day.

Mr. Rymer, amazed and awestruck, made a movement in his bed; and the figure looked round, with large eyes that in the moonlight looked like melting snow, and stretching its long arms up the chimney, they and the figure itself seemed to blend with the smoke, and so pass up and away.

p. 181.) does not mention Rymer, he perhaps may not know that he will find in that collection some documentary evidence on the subject of this saint, if saint he was; for instance "Super rumore Thomam nuper Comitem Lancastriæ miraculis corruscuri."Rym.

Witness Rymer: "Ad Papam; pro canonisatione Thomae nuper Comitis Lancastriæ."Foed.

that Richard II. renewed the application for Thomas's canonization; but he does not give his authority, and I have not time to look further through Rymer.