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?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
'Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prithee, why so mute?
'Quit, quit, for shame; this will not move,
This can not take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her—
The devil take her!'
We are tempted to add still another, which, to our taste, is the best of his songs. A faulty versification deserves censure in all of them:
'Hast thou seen the down in the air,
When wanton blasts have tossed it?
Or the ship on the sea,
When ruder winds have crossed it?
Hast thou marked the crocodile's weeping,
Or the fox's sleeping?
Or hast thou viewed the peacock in his pride,
Or the dove by his bride,
When
