Suckling was of slight figure and middle stature, with a face handsome and full of animation. His fine appearance, due also in part to excellent taste in dress, made him a universal favorite at court. He was no doubt as faithful a friend as a volatile disposition would allow; a fair specimen, in short, of the elegant gentleman of the times. Aubrey speaks of him as 'incomparable at reparteeing, the bull that was bayted, his witt beinge most sparkling, when most set on and provoked.' His expenditures went beyond liberality; they were extravagant. His credit with the tradesmen soon became worthless. The greater part of his money was made at gaming. He was one of the most skillful men of his age at cards and at bowls. So absorbed would he become in the former, that he would often lie in bed the greater part of the day studying their various changes. He became notorious in an age when every one played to excess. No one 'fought the tiger' (to borrow the modern expression) with more indomitable pluck than Sir John; for, as his friend Will Davenant tells us, 'at his lowest ebb he would make himself glorious in apparel, and said that it exalted his spirits'--a curious philosophy, suggestive not a little of Dickens' Mark Tapley. Pope has accused Suckling of being an 'immoral man, as well as debauched.' One is ready, with Leigh Hunt, to ask for the difference between these qualities of vice. The explanation is, that dissipation in general was excused by the times, but Sir John was suspected of unfair play at cards--a suspicion which appears to have rested upon a mere trifle for its foundation. In 1641, while a member of the Long Parliament, he was found guilty by the Commons of having assisted Lord Stafford in his attempt to escape from the Tower. Davenant and Jermyn were concerned in the affair. Suckling, as usual, took to his heels, and arrived safe in France. His flight was the signal for the appearance of a number of ballads about London. One, with forty-two wretchedly-conceived stanzas, was entitled: 'A letter sent by Sir John Suckling from France, deploring his sad estate and flight, with a discoverie of the plot and conspiracie intended by him and his adherents against England.' A tolerably well-executed engraving, on a folio sheet, was also circulated, representing two cavaliers lounging among cards, dice-boxes, and drinking-cups, and set off with wholesome Scriptural quotations, and verses in praise of the temperate. 'Hee is a frugal man indeede, That with a leafe can dine; 'He needes no napkin for his handes, His fingers for to wipe; He hath his kitchen in a box, His roast meat in a pipe.' The title to this choice bit of satire was in staring letters: THE SUCKLINGTON FACTION; OR, SUCKLING'S ROARING BOYES. Another curiosity in the rare catalogue popular just after Sir John's death, was: 'A copy of two remonstrances brought over the river Stix in Caron's ferry-boate, by the ghost of Sir John Suckling.'