Sir John Suckling (1609–42), poet, was born at Whitton in Middlesex, the son of a secretary of state to James I. In 1623 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1628 went on his travels, and served for some time under Gustavus Adolphus. He returned about 1632, became famous at court for his wit and prodigality, and in 1639 raised a troop of 100 horse to aid the king against the Scots. Suckling was returned to the Long Parliament, joined in the abortive plot to rescue Strafford from the Tower, and in more desperate plots still against the liberties of the kingdom, but his schemes being discovered fled to the Continent. Impoverished and disgraced, he almost certainly poisoned himself at Paris. The works of Suckling consist of four plays, “Aglaura,” “The Goblins,” “Brennoralt,” and “The Sad One,” now forgotten; a prose treatise, “An Account of Religion by Reason:” a few “Letters;” and a series of miscellaneous poems, beginning with “A Sessions of the Poets” (1637), which is happily descriptive of the author’s contemporaries. But the fame of Suckling rests on his ballads and songs such as the “Ballad upon a Wedding” and “Why so pale and wan, fond lover?” See the Rev. A. Suckling’s “Selections, with a Life” (1836), reproduced by W. C. Hazlitt (1874; new ed. 1893); also the Memoir prefixed to F. A. Stokes’s edition (New York, 1885).

Personal

  He was the greatest gallant of his time, and the greatest gamester, both for bowling and cards, so that no shopkeeper would trust him for 6d., as to-day, for instance, he might, by winning, be worth 200 li., the next day he might not be worth half so much, or perhaps be sometimes minus nihilo. Sir William [Davenant] (who was his intimate friend, and loved him intirely) would say that Sir John, when he was at his lowest ebbe in gameing, I meane when unfortunate, then would make himselfe most glorious in apparell, and sayd that it exalted his spirits, and that he had then best luck when he was most gallant, and his spirits were highest…. He was of middle stature and slight strength, brisque round eie, reddish fac’t and red nose (ill liver), his head not very big, his hayre a kind of sand colour; his beard turnd-up naturally, so that he had brisk and gracefull looke. He died a batchelour…. Sir John Suckling—from Mr. William Beeston—invented the game of cribbidge.

  He had so pregnant a Genius that he spoke Latin at Five Years Old, and writ it at Nine Years of Age. His Skill in Languages, and Musick, was Remarkable; but above all his Poetry, took with all the People, whose Souls were polished by the Charms of the Muses: And tho’ War did not so well agree with his Constitution; yet in his Travels he made a Campaign under the Famous Gustavus, where he was present at three Battles, five Sieges, and as many Skirmishes: and if his Valour was not so Remarkable, in the North in the beginning of the Wars; yet his Loyalty was conspicuous, by his Expence in the Troop of Horse, which he rais’d, whose Equipage, viz. Horses, Arms and Clothes, were provided all at his own Charge, and stood him in 12000l.

  Sir John Suckling was an immoral man, as well as debauched. The story of the French cards was told me by the late Duke of Buckingham; and he had it from old Lady Dorset herself. That lady took a very odd pride in boasting of her familiarities with Sir John Suckling. She is the Mistress and Goddess in his poems; and several of those pieces were given by herself to the printer. This the Duke of Buckingham used to give as one instance of the fondness she had to let the world know how well they were acquainted.

  Sir John Suckling, a poet of great vivacity, and some elegance, was one of the finest gentlemen of his time.

  The active life of our poet was now drawing rapidly towards its closing scene. Time, as it rolled in its unceasing course, brought no prospect of a national reunion, while the interdict against his safety continued in full validity. Reduced, at length, in fortune, and dreading to encounter poverty, which his habits and temper were little calculated to endure—hurled from his rank in society—an alien, and perhaps friendless—his energies at length gave way to the complicated wretchedness of his situation, and he contemplated an act which he had himself condemned in others. Purchasing poison of an apothecary at Paris, he produced death, says Aubrey, by violent fits of vomiting. Some writers, with great tenderness to his character, have attributed his end to other causes and dissimilar means; but, I regret to add, family tradition confirms the first and most revolting narration…. Thus perished immaturely, and in a land of strangers, the accomplished subject of this memoir; marked indeed by early levity and indiscretions, but happily more distinguished by devoted loyalty and intellectual refinement. If he be charged with want of prudence in the direction of his great abilities to his own advancement, they were at least ever exerted in favour of the learned and the deserving. If his earlier years were stained by habits of intemperance and frivolity, he has amply redeemed himself by the exertions of his maturer age. To a kind and amiable temper be united a generous and a friendly disposition; while the proofs of his patriotism and loyalty have been so fully developed in the progress of this essay, that, with all his imperfections, he is entitled to rank with the most distinguished characters of his day.

  The delight of the Court and the darling of the Muses, Suckling was one of the sweetest poets, the most refined gentleman, and perhaps the wildest and most reckless cavalier of the age in which he lived.

  He comes among a herd of scented fops with careless natural grace, and an odour of morning flowers upon him. You know not which would have been most delighted with his compliments, the dairy maid or the duchess. He was thrown too early upon a town life; otherwise a serious passion for some estimable woman, which (to judge from his graver poetry) he was very capable of entertaining, might have been the salvation of him. As it was, he died early, and, it is said, not happily; but this may have been the report of envy or party-spirit; for he was a great loyalist. It is probable, however, that he excelled less as a partizan than as a poet and a man of fashion. He is said to have given a supper to the ladies of his acquaintance, the last course of which consisted of millinery and trinkets. The great Nelson’s mother was a Suckling of the same stock, in Norfolk.

  Considering the early age at which he passed away, and what he has left behind him in print, not to name his political exploits, it will be allowed, no doubt, that Suckling was a man of no ordinary genius, nor have we it in our power, we apprehend, to raise a better monument to him, than a faithful text of his authentic writings.

  The feverish life of Suckling never fulfilled its true issues. Expatriated and disgraced, his sun went down in a foreign land, ere almost it had reached its meridian…. To the allurements of a court at first brilliant and trifling, then sensual and devilish, we owe in great measure the failure of Sucking’s life, and the extinction of his fine genius. But, when all deductions have been made, there still remain substantial reasons for classing the poet honourably amongst the distinguished men of his age.

  No English poet has lived a life so public, so adventurous and so full of vicissitude as his. Nothing short of an irresistible bias towards the art of poetry could have induced so busy and so fortunate a man to write in verse at all. Beautiful and vigorous in body, educated in all the accomplishments that grace a gentleman, endowed from earliest youth with the prestige of a soldier and a popular courtier, his enormous wealth enabled him to indulge every whim that a fondness for what was splendid or eccentric in dress, architecture and pageantry could devise. Such a life could present no void which literary ambition could fill, and Suckling’s scorn for poetic fame was well known to his contemporaries.

  Sir John Suckling was a gay courtier, much addicted to gambling, like many others who, by the side of the grave decorum of Charles’s domestic life, anticipated the loose profligacies of the Whitehall of Charles II. As a writer of sparkling verses he secured the admiration of his contemporaries, and has retained the admiration of later generations. His conversation was as easy and brilliant as his verse, and be readily made himself acceptable to the ladies of the Court, who thought it no shame to listen to the airy doctrine that constancy in married life was a fit object of scorn, and that modesty was but an empty name. Amongst men he was much respected. Once in his life he had thought of marrying a lady whose attractions were to be found in the weight of her purse. A rival, strong of arm, cudgelled him till he agreed to renounce all claims upon the golden prize.

General

  Among the highest and most refined wits of the nation, this gentle and princely poet took his generous rise from the Court, where, having flourished with splendour and reputation, he lived only long enough to see the sunset of that majesty from whose auspicious beams he derived his lustre, and with whose declining state his own loyal fortunes were obscured. But after the several changes of those times, being sequestered from the more serene contentments of his native country, he first took care to secure the dearest and choicest of his papers in the several cabinets of his noble and faithful friends, and among other testimonies of his worth, these elegant and florid pieces of his fancy were preserved in the custody of his truly honourable and virtuous sister, with whose free permission they were transcribed, and now published exactly according to the originals. This might be sufficient to make you acknowledge that these are the real and genuine works of Sir John Suckling; but if you can yet doubt, let any judicious soul seriously consider the freedom of the fancy, richness of the conceipt, proper expression, with that air and spirit diffused through every part, and he will find such a perfect resemblance with what hath been formerly known, that he cannot with modesty doubt them to be his. I could tell you further (for I myself am the best witness of it), what a thirst and general inquiry hath been after what I here present you, by all that have either seen or heard of them. And by that time you have read them, you will believe me, who have, now for many years, annually published the productions of the best wits of our own and foreign nations.

  Full of flowers, [“Aglaura”] but rather stuck in than growing there.

  His poems are clear, sprightly, and natural,—his plays well-humoured and taking—his letters fragrant and sparkling.

  The grace and elegance of his songs and ballads are inimitable.

  Sir John Suckling is acknowledged to have left far behind him all former writers of song in gayety and ease: it is not equally clear that he has ever since been surpassed. His poetry aims at no higher praise: he shows no sentiment or imagination, either because he had them not, or because he did not require either in the style he chose. Perhaps the Italians may have poetry in that style equal to Suckling’s; I do not know that they have, nor do I believe that there is any in French: that there is none in Latin I am convinced.

  For one who now reads anything of Carew there are twenty who know by heart some verses of his friend and brother-courtier, Sir John Suckling. His ballad upon a wedding, with the necessary omission of a verse or two, is in all our books of poetic extracts.

  Has none of the pathos of Lovelace or Carew, but he equals them in fluency and natural grace of manner, and he has besides a sprightliness and buoyancy which is all his own. His poetry has a more impulsive air than theirs; and while, in reference to the greater part of what he has produced, he must be classed along with them and Waller as an adherent to the French school of propriety and precision, some of the happiest of his effusions are remarkable for a cordiality and impetuosity of manner which has nothing foreign about it, but is altogether English, although there is not much resembling it in any of his predecessors any more than of his contemporaries, unless perhaps in some of Skelton’s pieces. His famous ballad of “The Wedding” is the very perfection of gayety and archness in verse; and his “Session of the Poets,” in which he scatters about his wit and humor in a more careless style, may be considered as constituting him the founder of a species of satire, which Cleveland and Marvel and other subsequent writers carried into new applications, and which only expired among us with Swift.

  They turn eloquent phrases in order to be applauded, and flattering exaggerations in order to please. The divine faces, the serious or profound looks, the virgin or impassioned expressions which burst forth at every step in the early poets, have disappeared; here we see nothing but agreeable countenances, painted in agreeable verses. Blackguardism is not far off; we meet with it as early as in Suckling, and crudity to boot, and prosaic epicurism.

  Suckling—strange as it may appear to those who only know his career as a poet—wrote a brief religious treatise, entitled “An Account of Religion by Reason.” There is little of thought or genuine argument in the treatise. It is the work of an elegant litterateur handling a subject which he knows imperfectly, and only from the outside. But the mere fact is a testimony to the theological excitement which then everywhere pervaded society, and indicates the desire there must have been in many minds, besides those whose writings an speculations have come to the surface, to examine the subject of religion rationally. Suckling avows that he feared the charge of Socinianism in his undertaking.

  A production [“The Goblins”] which defies—and as a drama hardly deserves—analysis. The conduct of its plot is at once dragging and breathless…. One finds some little difficulty in understanding how this sprightly fancy could have stood the test of stage-performance; but the rapid succession of scenes and the intermixture of lively dialogue with music, songs, and a superabundance of action may have taken away the breath of the spectators, and carried them on with victorious speed to the rather calmer close of the piece.

  While it is true that Suckling is devoid of imagination—in the higher sense of that word—it is a little unjust to deny him the presence of sentiment. But when a writer cannot be a great dramatist, it is something to be a true lyric poet, and this distinction Suckling rightfully enjoys. There is no finer poem of its kind than the “Ballad upon a Wedding,” while many of the shorter pieces of this writer will compare favourably with the lyrics of Herrick and Waller. Many poets have written lyrics with ease and freedom; but Suckling cut cameos, and some of them are almost worthy of standing alone…. The poet was, in the first place, unequal to a great or extended conception; and in the second, lacked the power, which distinguishes the true dramatist, of giving breadth of treatment to such conceptions as he had. “Aglaura” is said to have been the poet’s favourite drama…. “Aglaura” is studded with beautiful lines, and now and then there is even a sustained passage, but on the whole we are obliged to confess that the drama is stilted and unnatural…. His “Brennoralt” is generally regarded as his best dramatic work…. The versification of “Brennoralt” is almost as crude and halting as that of “Aglaura,” though, as a whole, the former must take precedence for its superior dramatic qualities. Yet the lyrics in “Aglaura” are far superior to those found in the later drama. Suckling’s comedy of “The Goblins” need not detain us.

  Sir John Suckling is never to be trusted for good behavior through many stanzas, but how enchantingly gay he is! The utter frankness of his hilarity does something toward atoning for its coarseness. We are quite sure that he is never worse than his words, and even suspect that he is not altogether so desperate a rake as he sometimes pretends. If his courtesy seem scant, there is, at all events, no craft lurking beneath it; and so far from hating or discrediting the object of his bold advances because she had repelled them, he treats her with a mixture of petulant astonishment and whimsical respect altogether naïf and amusing.

  A worse playwright is scarcely to be found, even in that miserable period, among the Gomersalls, Lowers, and Killigrews. “Aglaura,” a monster of tedious pageantry, was arranged with a tragic and a comic ending, according to choice: but this was not so unique as has been supposed, for we find the same silly contrivance in Howard’s “Vestal Virgin” and in the “Pandora” of Sir William Killigrew. The only drama of Suckling’s which is at all readable is “Brennoralt,” which is incoherent enough, but does contain some fine tragic writing. The only real merit of these plays however consists in the beautiful songs they harbour.

  The selectors seem to have been afraid of giving the whole of this most delicious ballad, [“A Ballad of a Wedding”] a ballad “of twenty-two incomparable verses, of wonderful brightness and sweetness,” fairly so described by Mr. Gosse in his excellent introduction of the poet, in Ward’s “English Poets.” Even there we have sixteen only of the “incomparable verses,” one as of old incorrect and out of place; and what is yet worse, the fragment printed as if whole, without notice of excision except the few words I quote, not necessarily seen by readers of the Ballad. But the omitted stanzas may (my readers can judge for themselves) be “not in harmony with modern manners,” as Mr. Palgrave so prettily phraseth it, and as some Rev. Mr. Suckling would seem also to have imagined, who gives with a Memoir of the Poet only the usual sixteen stanzas, without note or apology. A fastidiousness scarcely honest while Shakspere, not yet out of harmony, is on every gentleman’s table.

  In the garden of Suckling’s verse, side by side with rare blossoms of delightful fragrance, grew unsightly and noisome weeds. Of course they were affected by their surroundings and by the unnatural light of his court and his time; but some of his writings outrage the taste or morality of to-day. He is, however, although not as widely read or known as he should be, one of the immortals in literature, and had he written nothing but “A Ballad upon a Wedding” and the song beginning “Why so pale and wan, fond lover,” he would have earned his immortality. Their simplicity, grace, and wit are unmatched and are peculiarly his own. Their flavor is most rare: it delights at once, and is never forgotten. The path which Suckling’s verse takes never scales sublime heights, but runs through fields where music and laughter are heard, where beauty is seen, and where there are occasional stormy days. His imagination never awes, nor does his feeling stir us deeply; but his fancy pleases us, his wit and gayety provoke a smile, and his careless ease and grace charm us.

  We go to him for his easy grace, his agreeable impudence, his scandalous mock-disloyalty (for it is only mock-disloyalty after all) to the “Lord of Terrible Aspect,” whom all his elder contemporaries worshipped so piously. Suckling’s inconstancy and Lovelace’s constancy may or may not be equally poetical,—there is some reason for thinking that the lover of Althea was actually driven to something like despair by the loss of his mistress. But that matters to us very little. The songs remain, and remain yet unsurpassed, as the most perfect celebrations, in one case of chivalrous devotion, in the other of the coxcomb side of gallantry, that literature contains or is likely ever to contain.

  I admire Suckling’s graceful audacity. It is luckier to do a little thing surpassingly well than a larger thing indifferently so.

  His poems were collected and published five years after his death. They are, like their author, full of careless grace and light-hearted gallantry; but slovenly, and only too often unquotable…. There is nothing in his poems of the chivalrous devotion that dignifies Lovelace’s two great songs; impudent frankness and careless bonhomie are their special characteristics. He might, perhaps, have produced better poetry if he had abandoned his favourite doctrine that a gentleman ought not to take trouble over verse-writing.