SOURCE: “Jacobean and Caroline Lyric,” in English Lyrical Poetry From Its Origins to the Present Time, Yale University Press, 1912, pp. 223-301.

In the following excerpt, Reed considers Suckling's wry attitude toward his poetic muse.

One of [Thomas] Carew's intimate friends at court was Sir John Suckling (1609-1642). He studied at Cambridge, where he was known as “a polite but not a deep scholar”; travelled abroad for three years; and joined the forty English gentlemen volunteers who fought under Gustavus Adolphus. In 1632 he returned to Whitehall, where his gaiety, his wit, and his lavish expenditures made him a favorite. He was a spendthrift; he squandered his fortune; and to repair his losses, became a reckless gambler, the gossip of the day asserting that he stooped to dishonorable methods to win. Certain it is that his court life ruined him. For the Scottish expedition he raised a company of one...