nkly informed his readers that one 'passion' was
'wholly translated out of Petrarch;' that in another passion 'he did very
busily imitate and augment a certain ode of Ronsard;' while 'the sense or
matter of "a third" was taken out of Serafino in his "Strambotti."' In
every case Watson gave the exact reference to his foreign original, and
frequently appended a quotation. {103a} Drayton in 1594, in the
dedicatory sonnet of his collection of sonnets entitled 'Idea,' declared
that it was 'a fault too common in this latter time' 'to filch from
Desportes or from Petrarch's pen.' {103b} Lodge did not acknowledge his
borrowings more specifically than his colleagues, but he made a plain
profession of indebtedness to Desportes when he wrote: 'Few men are able
to second the sweet conceits of Philippe Desportes, whose poetical
writings are ordinarily in everybody's hand.' {103c} Giles Fletcher, who
in his collection of sonnets called 'Licia' (1593) simulated the varying
moods of a lover under the sway of a great passion as successfully as
most of his rivals, stated on his title-page that his poems were all
written in 'imitation of the best Latin poets and others.' Very many of
the love-sonnets in the series of sixty-eight penned ten years later by
William Drummond of Hawthornden have been traced to their sources in the
Italian sonnets not merely of Petrarch, but of the sixteenth-century
poets Guarini, Bembo, Giovanni Battista Marino, Tasso, and Sannazzaro.
{104a} The Elizabethans usually gave the fictitious mistresses after
whom their volumes of sonnets were called the names that had recently
served the like purpose in France. Daniel followed Maurice Seve {104b}
in christening his collection 'Delia;' Constable followed Desportes in
christening his collection 'Diana;' while Drayton not only applied to his
sonnets on his title-page in 1594 the French term 'amours,' but bestowed
on his imaginary heroine the title of Idea, which seems to have been the
invention of Claude de Pontoux, {104c} although it was employed by other
French contemporaries.

Sonnetteers' admission of insincerity.

With good reason Sir Philip Sidney warned the public that 'no inward
touch' was to be expected from sonnetteers of his day, whom he describes
as

'[Men] that do dictionary's method bring
Into their rhymes running in rattling rows;
[Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes
With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing.'