Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/18

 hopelessness of the cause which he longed to serve. At any rate, the type of intellect which the letter shows was not a type which would be freely employed on the minute intricacies of fancy so dear to Donne and his followers.

It follows that, where Suckling excels as a poet, we find him dealing with concrete subjects, or using imagery with which he is practically familiar. This is the merit of a lyric like ''Tis now since I sat down,' in which the details of the simile are so perfectly adjusted to the subject of the poem. Suckling's obvious cynicism where affairs of the heart were concerned expresses itself at once in verse. 'Why so pale and wan, fond lover?' is a happy impromptu in which the natural Suckling declares himself without reserve. When he turns to hymn constant love in 'O! for some honest lover's ghost,' he is writing conventionally and uneasily, and the conclusion of the poem, with its airy disclaimer of the possible rewards of earthly fidelity, is arrived at with evident relief. Similarly, beside the Ballad upon a Wedding, the dialogue on the same subject between Suckling and his friend Bond is awkward and uninteresting. The ballad itself finds Suckling in a thoroughly congenial mood. He has no longer to forage for similes 'far-fetched and dear-bought,' but speaks as a plain person dealing directly with facts. Putting himself in the position of a countryman come up to town, free to adopt the simple imagery of a country life which he evidently loved, his imagination comes into play unforced, and his task of simple description is at once enlivened by the exquisite pictures which imagination in these happy circumstances suggests. It is not that these pictures are peculiarly Suckling's own: the Easter sunshine had already been the chief motive of George Herbert's loveliest and most natural lyric, and other writers had found analogies between fresh beauty and the Catherine pear, but no one had made these allusions with so little elaboration or with so thoroughly pictorial an effect. Here, at his best, Suckling is akin to Herrick, equalling him in the delicacy of line with which his pictures are drawn, but giving no hint of that gentle philosophy, so susceptible to the beauty and pleasure of the moment, while so apprehensive of its fleeting rapture, which gives Herrick's verse its never-failing charm.