Sir John, an English poet and dramatist, was the son of Sir John Suckling, comptroller of the household to King Charles I. and was born in the year 1608-9. He is supposed to have been born at Twickenham, as it appears from the parish-register that he was baptized there on the 10th of February. He discovered an uncommon aptitude for the acquiring of languages, insomuch that he is reported to have spoken Latin at five years of age, and to have written it at nine. When he grew up, he travelled; but seems to have affected nothing more than the character of a courtier and fine gentleman; which he so far attained that he was allowed to have the peculiar happiness of making every thing he did become him. In his travels he made a campaign under the great Gustavus Adolphus; and his loyalty, if not his valour, appeared in the beginning of our civil wars; for, after his return to England, he raised a troop of horse for the king's service, entirely at his own charge, and mounted them so completely and richly that they are said to have cost him L12,000. This troop, with Sir John at its head, behaved so ill in the engagement with the Scots, upon the English borders, in 1638, as to occasion a famous lampoon, composed by Sir John Mennis, which was set to a brisk tune, and much sung by the parliamentarians. This disastrous expedition, and the ridicule that attended it, were supposed to have hastened his death; but he survived till the 7th of May 1741. He was a sprightly wit and an easy versifier, but no great poet. His poems, plays, speeches, tracts, and letters, were collected into an octavo volume in the year 1709.