Wyatt's and Surrey's Sonnets, published in 1557. Watson's 'Centurie of
Love,' 1582.

The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in England were those
by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, which first appeared in the
publisher Tottel's poetical miscellany called 'Songes and Sonnetes' in
1557. This volume included sixteen sonnets by Surrey and twenty by
Wyatt. Many of them were translated directly from Petrarch, and most of
them treated conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love.
Surrey included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend Wyatt,
and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful follower. Tottel's
volume was seven times reprinted by 1587. But no sustained endeavour was
made to emulate the example of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about
1580 circulated in manuscript his 'Booke of Passionate Sonnetes,' which
he wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford. The volume was printed in
1582, under the title of '[Greek text], or Passionate Centurie of Loue.
Divided into two parts: whereof the first expresseth the Authours
sufferance on Loue: the latter his long farewell to Loue and all his
tyrannie. Composed by Thomas Watson, and published at the request of
certaine Gentlemen his very frendes.' Watson's work, which he called 'a
toy,' is a curious literary mosaic. He supplied to each poem a prose
commentary, in which he not only admitted that every conceit was
borrowed, but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from classical
literature or from the work of French or Italian sonnetteers. {428a} Two
regular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 'passions' there is
appended a four-line stanza which gives each poem eighteen instead of the
regular fourteen lines. Watson's efforts were so well received, however,
that he applied himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets
in strict metre. This collection, entitled 'The Teares of Fancie,' only
circulated in manuscript in his lifetime. {428b}

Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella,' 1591.

Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 1586, had
written and circulated among his friends a more ambitious collection of a
hundred and eight sonnets. Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by
him under the name of Astrophel to a beautiful woman poetically
designated Stella. Sidney had in real life courted assiduously the
favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, and a few of the sonnets
a