o 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--_praeterea 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.