Shǐ Dázǔ 史達祖 (fl. c. 1195–1207; conventional dates c. 1163–c. 1220), zì Bāngqīng 邦卿, hào Méixī 梅溪, of Biàn 汴 (Kāifēng) in the lost Northern-Sòng capital. The high official Hán Tuōzhòu 韓侂胄 employed him as a Tánglì 堂吏 (private secretary) in his great chancellor’s establishment, where Shǐ in effect ran a parallel government during Hán’s ascendancy; this is the historical “Shǐ Dázǔ the Tánglì” who appears in Tián Rǔchéng 田汝成’s Xīhú zhìyú. The conventional SòngQīng impulse to treat him as a separate, “innocent” homonym (so as to save the poetry from the politics) is rejected by the Sìkù editors and by modern scholarship, on the strength of internal evidence in the cí (gazetteer notes such as “Qítiānyuè 5: night of mid-autumn lodged at Zhēndìng station”; “Mǎnjiānghóng 2: 9th month, day 21: at Dōngjīng remembering antiquity”; “Shuǐlóng yín 3: accompanying the mission, taking leave of fellow-students of the shè”; etc.) which place him on Lǐ Bì 李璧’s diplomatic embassy to the Jīn — a mission that was Hán Tuōzhòu’s, not anyone else’s. When Hán was assassinated in 1207, Shǐ was disgraced and exiled (by some accounts branded and bastinadoed). His cí is nevertheless very fine — the Méixī cí KR4j0055 preserves about 110 pieces — and was famously praised by his contemporary Zhāng Zī 張鎡, who set Shǐ on a footing with Zhōu Bāngyàn 周邦彥 (hào Qīngzhēn 清真) and Hè Zhù 賀鑄 (zì Fānghuí 方回), above the “Sānbiàn” 三變 (Liǔ Yǒng’s 柳永 childhood name). CBDB id 39168 has no recorded dates.