That the critical theories of the seventeenth-century French school of rules find numerous parallels in the work of Thomas Rymer has been perceived by various students of literary criticism. But the recognition of general resemblances has not served, apparently, to secure uniformity of opinion in classifying Rymer as a critic, or in determining the extent to which he represented, in English criticism, the French codification of the rules. Professor Saintsbury states that Eymer had a “charcoal-burner's faith in ‘the rules.‘” On the other hand, Professor Spingarn, who has gone farthest in tracing the parallelisms between Eymer's work and that of preceding critics, regards his work as rationalistic, or based upon common sense, rather than formalistic, based upon rule and precedent. The one would regard Eymer as a participant in the French tradition; the other, as primarily a continuator of certain previously existing English methods. An analysis of the relationship between Rymer and the French critics of the school of rules, more systematic than has yet been attempted, may aid in determining to what extent the critical standards and methods of the French Aristotelian formalists are approximated in Rymer, and what influence the French school had upon one whose criticism, however it may be regarded now, was of great weight and importance for years after it was written.