Our age’s wonder, by thy birth, the fame,
  Of Belgia, by thy banishment, the shame;
  Who to more knowledge younger didst arrive
  Than forward Glaucias, yet art still alive,
  Whose matters oft (for suddenly you grew,
  To equal and pass those, and need no new)
  To see how soon, how far thy wit could reach,
  Sat down to wonder, when they came to teach. 
  Oft then would Scaliger contented be
  To leave to mend all times, to polish thee. 
  And of that pains, 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.