effect did higher boast,
Than had he gain'd all that his fathers lost.
When thy Capella read----------------------
That King of critics stood amaz'd to see
A work so like his own set forth by thee.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Athen. Oxon. vol. i. col. 586.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon's History, &c.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid.]

[Footnote 4: Clarendon, ubi supra.]

[Footnote 5: Memoirs, &c. by Welwood, edit 1718. 12mo. p. 90--92.]

[Footnote 6: Historical Collections, p. 11. vol. 2. p. 1342.]

* * * * *

Sir JOHN SUCKLING

Lived in the reign of King Charles I. and was son of Sir John
Suckling, comptroller of the houshold to that monarch. He was born
at Witham, in the county of Middlesex, 1613, with a remarkable
circumstance of his mother's going eleven months with him, which
naturalists look upon as portending a hardy and vigorous constitution.
A strange circumstance is related of him, in his early years, in a
life prefixed to his works. He spoke Latin, says the author, at five
years old, and wrote it at nine; if either of these circumstances is
true, it would seem as if he had learned Latin from his nurse, nor
ever heard any other language, so that it was native to him; but to
speak Latin at five, in consequence of study, is almost impossible.

The polite arts, which our author chiefly admired, were music and
poetry; how far he excelled in the former, cannot be known, nor can
we agree with his life-writer already mentioned, that he excelled in
both. Sir John Suckling seems to have been no poet, nor to have had
even the most distant appearances of it; his lines are generally so
unmusical, that none can read them without grating their ears; being
author of several plays, he may indeed be called a dramatist, and
consequently comes within our design; but as he is destitute of
poetical conceptions, as well as the power of numbers, he has no
pretensions to rank among the good poets.

Dryden somewhere calls him a sprightly wit, a courtly writer. In
this sense he is what Mr. Dryden stiles him; but then he is no poet,
notwithstanding. His letters, which are published along with his
plays, are exceeding courtly, his stile easy and genteel, and his
thoughts natural; and in reading his letters, one would wonder that
the same man, who could write so elegantly in prose, should not better
succeed in verse.

After Suckling had made himself acquainted with the constitution of
his own country, and