ing. 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:

THE SUCKLINGTON FACTION;

OR,

SUCKLING'S ROARING BOYES.

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 w