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SIR JOHN SUCKLING
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| 18. | l. 20. | sights] scenes Waller. This variant has not been mentioned by Mr. Drury, who notes all the rest. |
| 'There never yet,' etc.] W. W.'s note is as follows: 'This poem is remarkable for ease and sprightliness, the true characteristics of Sir J. Suckling's verse, and may therefore be taken as a fair specimen of his powers. Suckling seems to have been intimately acquainted with the female heart; he praises, ridicules, and adores the sex in the same breath. The germs of thought in some of Moore's most beautiful lyrics may be found in this ode.' | ||
| 19. | l. 10. | to jet in general] Cf. Twelfth Night, II., v. 36. |
| l. 15. | It is because, etc.] 1648; It is because the loadstone yet was never brought 1646, 1658, etc.; It is because near the loadstone yet 'twas never brought, Hazlitt. It seems probable that what Suckling wrote was, It is because to th' loadstone yet 'twas never brought, and that a misprint in the first edition brought about the subsequent introduction of near. | |
| To my Friend Will. Davenant. | ||
| The two pieces addressed to D'Avenant were prefixed to D'Avenant's collected poems in 1638. Madagascar, printed 1635, was dedicated to Henry Jermyn, afterwards Earl of St. Albans. Aubrey, loc. cit., i. 205, calls Jermyn and Endymion Porter D'Avenant's 'two Mecaenasses.' D'Avenant had become poet laureate in 1637. | ||
| 20. | To my Friend Will. D'Avenant, on his other Poems. | |
| l. 3. | the great lord of it] The phrase recalls Carew's epicede on Donne: 'Here lies a king that ruled, as he thought fit, The universal monarchy of wit.' Cf. ll. 49, 50 of the same poem: 'Since to the awe of thy imperious wit Our troublesome language bends,' etc. Donne died in 1631. | |
| 'Love, Reason, Hate'] The game of barley-break, which furnishes the idea of these verses, is explained in the last eclogue of Sidney's Arcadia, lib. i. It was played by three couples: the middle couple was said to be 'in hell,' and had to catch the other couples. The catching pair were not allowed to separate till they had succeeded; while the other pairs, if hard pressed, were | ||
