The song in your second number, furnished by a correspondent, and considered to be in the style of Suckling, is of a class common enough in the time of Charles I. George Wither, rather than Suckling, I consider as the head of a race of poets peculiar to that age, as "Shall I wasting in Despair" may be regarded as the type of this class of poems. The present instance I do not think of very high merit, and certainly not good enough for Suckling. Such as it is, however, with a few unimportant variations, it may be found at page 101. of the 1st vol. of The Hive, a Collection of the most celebrated Songs. My copy is the 2nd edit. London, 1724.
I will, with your permission, take this opportunity of setting Mr. Dyce right with regard to a passage in the Two Noble Kinsmen, in which he is only less wrong than all his predecessors. It is to be found in the second scene of the fourth act, and is as follows:—
"Here Love himself sits smiling:
Just such another wanton Ganymede
Set Jove afire with," &c.
One editor proposed to amend this by inserting the normative "he" after "Ganymede;" and another by omitting "with" after "afire." Mr. Dyce saw that both these must be wrong, as a comparison between two wanton Ganymedes, one of which sat in the coutenance of Arcite, could never have been intended;—another, something, if not Ganymede, was wanted, and he, therefore, has this note:—"The construction and meaning are, 'With just such another smile (which is understood from the preceding 'smiling') wanton Ganymede set Jove afire." When there is a choice of nouns to make intelligible sense, how can that one be understood which is not expressed? It might be "with just such another Love;" but, as I shall shortly show, no conjecture on the subject is needed. The older editors were so fond of mending passages, that they did not take ordinary pains to understand them; and in this instance they have been so successful in sticking the epithet "wanton" to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, with his clear sight, did not see that the very word he wanted was the next word before him. It puts one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who has them already across his nose. "Wanton" is a noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it from being mistaken for an epithet applied to Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place after it a comma, when the passage will read thus:—
"Here Love himself sits smiling.
Just such another wanton," (as the aforesaid smiling Love) "Ganymede
Set Jove afire with," &c.
The third act of the same play commences thus:—