The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862

To Scotland for to ride—á!'

became the delight of the town.

Suckling was of slight figure and middle stature, with a face handsome and full of animation. His fine appearance, due also in part to excellent taste in dress, made him a universal favorite at court. He was no doubt as faithful a friend as a volatile disposition would allow; a fair specimen, in short, of the elegant gentleman of the times. Aubrey speaks of him as 'incomparable at reparteeing, the bull that was bayted, his witt beinge most sparkling, when most set on and provoked.' His expenditures went beyond liberality; they were extravagant. His credit with the tradesmen soon became worthless. The greater part of his money was made at gaming. He was one of the most skillful men of his age at cards and at bowls. So absorbed would he become in the former, that he would often lie in bed the greater part of the day studying their various changes. He became notorious in an age when every one played to excess. No one 'fought the tiger' (to borrow the modern expression) with more indomitable pluck than Sir John; for, as his friend Will Davenant tells us, 'at his lowest ebb he would make himself glorious in apparel, and said that it exalted his spirits'—a curious philosophy, suggestive not a little of Dickens' Mark Tapley. Pope has accused Suckling of being an 'immoral man, as well as debauched.' One is ready, with Leigh Hunt, to ask for the difference between these qualities of vice. The explanation is, that dissipation in general was excused by the times, but Sir John was suspected of unfair play at cards—a suspicion which appears to have rested upon a mere trifle for its foundation.

In 1641, while a member of the Long Parliament, he was found guilty by the Commons of having assisted Lord Stafford in his attempt to escape from the Tower. Davenant and Jermyn were concerned in the affair. Suckling, as usual, took to his heels, and arrived safe in France. His flight was the signal for the appearance of a number of ballads about London. One, with forty-two wretchedly-conceived stanzas, was entitled: 'A letter sent by Sir John Suckling from France, deploring his sad estate and flight, with a discoverie of the plot and conspiracie intended by him and his adherents against England.' A tolerably well-executed engraving, on a folio sheet, was also circulated, representing two cavaliers lounging among cards, dice-boxes, and drinking-cups, and set off with wholesome Scriptural quotations, and verses in praise of the temperate.

'Hee is a frugal man indeede,
That with a leafe can dine;

'He needes no napkin for his handes,
His fingers for to wipe;
He hath his kitchen in a box,
His roast meat in a pipe.'

The title to this choice bit of satire was in staring letters:

THE SUCKLINGTON FACTION;

OR,

SUCKLING'S ROARING BOYES

Another curiosity in the rare catalogue popular just after Sir John's death, was: 'A copy of two remonstrances brought over the river Stix in Caron's ferry-boate, by the ghost of Sir John Suckling.'

Every thing subsequent to his arrival in France is involved in hopeless obscurity, but the conjecture is pretty well founded that his death occurred some time during that same year. One account says that he poisoned himself at Paris. A more popular story is from letters in Lord Oxford's collection, and is given both by Spence and by Oldys. Sir John arrived late at night in Calais. In the morning, he found that his servant had run away with his money and papers. He called for a horse, and on drawing on his boot, felt a sharp pain, but making nothing of it in his hurry, he mounted and drove off in hot pursuit. The dishonest valet was apprehended, and the property recovered. Then he complained, the tale goes on to say, of pain in one of his feet; his boot was found to be full of blood. The servant had placed a nail in his master's boot, which had been driven into the flesh. He fainted from loss of blood, fell into a violent fever, and died in a few days. This, at least, is believed to be certain: that he perished in early manhood—almost before time was given him to repent of the follies of youth—in miserable exile from the land of his birth and kindred.

Suckling's literary remains, as we have already stated, consist of poems, letters, and dramas. These last-named productions were four in number. Aglaura, which was presented at the Private House in Blackfriars by his Majesty's Servants, is a tragedy, the scene of which is laid in Persia. This play was brought upon the stage in a style of princely magnificence. The dresses were of rich material, profusely ornamented with gold and silver, the kind indulgence of the audience, for once, not being asked to attribute an extraordinary value to professional tinsel. The author is said to have laid out four hundred pounds for this occasion. Brennoralt, also a tragedy, was first published under the title of The Discontented Colonel, in 1639, as a satire on the Scottish insurgents. The Goblins, a comedy in five acts, is enlivened by the presence of a motley crew of devils, clowns, wenches, and fiddlers; and an unfinished piece, entitled The Sad One, may also be classed as a tragedy, as it opens briskly with a 'murder within' in the very first scene, which undoubtedly would have culminated in wholesale horrors had the author gone on and completed the play.

We will not stop for any minute examination of these dramas. Suffice it to say, that they are devoid of interest at the present day; and from what we have been able to read of them, we question whether the success that is said to have attended their private representation was other than mere compliment. Unfortunately for their dramatic unity, the author is impatient of the restraint which a plot imposes, and the dialogue, in consequence, rambles off hither and thither into passages as foreign to the subject-matter as they are tame and spiritless in expression. There are kings and princes, but they utter very commonplace remarks; and an uncommonly liberal amount of bloodshed and stage-machinery contribute to startling incidents, but they fail to redeem the play from a tiresome monotony.

In the prologues, we find the author more at home:

'Then, gentlemen, be thrifty—save your dooms
For the next man or the next play that comes;
For smiles are nothing where men do not care,
And frowns are little where they need not fear.'

Aglaura: Prologue to the Court.

The following lines occur in the epilogue to the same play:

'But as, when an authentic watch is shown,
Each man winds up and rectifies his own,
So, in our very judgments,' etc.

The reader will readily call to mind the oft-quoted couplet in Pope's Essay on Criticism:

''Tis with our judgments as our watches: none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.'

Writing prefaces, it seems, has never been a popular task with book-makers, and playwrights have a no less weighty burden of complaint:

'Now, deuce take him that first good prologue writ:
He left a kind of rent-charge upon wit,
Which, if succeeding poets fail to pay,
They forfeit all they're worth, and that's their play.'

Prologue to The Goblins.

His apology for the present work is ingenious:

'The richness of the ground is gone and spent.
Men's brains grow barren, and you raise the rent.'

Ibid.

A collection of about thirty letters are addressed, for the most part, to the fair sex, and sparkle with wit and gallantry. The taste that is displayed in them is elegant, and the style, as rapid and flowing as correspondence need be—præterea nihil. When you have perused them, you find that nothing substantial has been said. But Suckling, with pains, might have risen to superior rank as a prose writer. This is evident from An Account of Religion by Reason, a brochure presented to the Earl of Dorset, wherein his perspicuous style appears to good advantage, joined with well-digested thought and argument.

But it is Suckling's poems that have been best known and most admired. The school that flourished in this age, and devoted its muse to gay and amorous poetry, was but a natural reaction from the stern, harsh views of the Puritan, who despised and condemned belles lettres as the wickedness of sin and folly. Suckling's poems are few in number, and, with rare exceptions, are all brief. The most lengthy is the Sessions of the Poets, a satire upon the poets of his day, from rare Ben Jonson, with Carew and Davenant, down to those of less note—

'Selwin and Walter, and Bartlett both the brothers,
Jack Vaughan, and Porter, and divers others.'

The versification is defective, but the satire is piquant, and no doubt discriminating and just. At any rate, what the poet says of himself hits the truth nearer than confessions commonly do:

'Suckling next was called, but did not appear;
But straight one whispered Apollo i' the ear,
That of all men living he cared not for't—
He loved not the muses so well as his sport;
And prized black eyes, or a lucky hit
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit.'

In Suckling's love-songs we discover the brilliancy of Sedley, the abandon of Rochester, (though hardly carried to so scandalous an extreme) and a strength and fervor which, with care for the minor matters of versification and melody, might have equaled or even surpassed the best strains of Herrick. In a complaint that his mistress will not return her heart for his that she has stolen, he says:

'I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I can not have thine;
For if from yours you will not part,
Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?

'Yet, now I think on't, let it lie;
To find it were in vain:
For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.'

The following, which has always been a favorite, was originally sung by Orsames in Aglaura, who figures in the dramatis personæ as an 'anti-Platonic young lord':

'Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?