The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862. Various
experience accrued from this service we are not informed, but no great amount of it was ever displayed upon his return to England. When the 'League and Covenant' ended in open rebellion, Suckling eagerly espoused the royal cause, and accompanied the King in his expedition against the Scots. It was the custom for each retainer to fit out his men according to his own taste, and at his own expense. Sir John arrayed one hundred horsemen in a gorgeous attire of scarlet and white, to the admiration of the fair sex, and at the expense of twelve thousand pounds. On arriving in sight of the enemy, it seems that they resolved not to soil their attire with such vulgar contact. If they had been told in the early day to follow their gallant leader, they obeyed the order now; for Sir John was making excellent good time away from the field, and, as nearly as he could judge, in the direction of London. This inglorious maneuver was improved by Sir John Mennes, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, and the author of Musarum Deliciæ, (who never suffered an opportunity of this kind to go by without blazing away in a lampoon;) and a jaunty song,
'Sir John he got him an ambling nag,
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:
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,