THE WORKS OF SIR JOHN SUCKLING.
The Works of Sir John Suckling. Edited. with Introduction and Notes, by A. Hamilton Thompson, M.A. (G. Routledge and Sons. 6s.)—Sir John Suckling wrote between two and three thousand lines of occasional verses, and four plays, one of them with a double ending and one unfinished. Posterity has not really cared to preserve anything out of this mass of writing—at least ten times as much as we have of Gray and Collins put together—except a song which comes in the fourth act of Aglaura, " Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? " and even of this the third stanza is naught, lacking the sprightly rhythm which is the charm of the first and second. We should not like to say that Mr. Thompson has wasted his labour. Anyhow, we know, thanks to the pains which he has taken, all that need be known about- the man. Mr. Thompson is quite candid ; he does not call upon us to admire what is not admirable. Generally, we get a picture, not very attractive, but certainly interesting, of an accomplished young gentleman of the Cavalier persuasion. Politically the interesting thing about Suckling is his connexion with the fate of Strafford. We have a letter of his addressed shortly after the meeting of Parliament to "Mr. Henry German" (Henry Jermyn), which seems to indicate a feeling that the King should not persist in protecting unpopular Ministers : "the second [Qattara] will be whether, if he could preserve those Ministers, they could be of any use to him hereafter ?" In the following year he was concerned in a plot for rescuing Strafford from the Tower, and had to fly from the country. He died in Paris in 1642, in his thirty-third year.
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