re commonly held to reflect the heat of passion which the genuine
intrigue developed. But Petrarch, Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the
majority of Sidney's efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like
sleep, the moon, his muse, grief, or lust, are almost verbatim
translations from the French. Sidney's sonnets were first published
surreptitiously, under the title of 'Astrophel and Stella,' by a
publishing adventurer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman
added an appendix of 'sundry other rare sonnets by divers noblemen and
gentlemen.' Twenty-eight sonnets by Daniel were printed in the appendix
anonymously and without the author's knowledge. Two other editions of
Sidney's 'Astrophel and Stella' without the appendix were issued in the
same year. Eight other of Sidney's sonnets, which still circulated only
in manuscript, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the sonnets of
Henry Constable, and these were appended with some additions to the
authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' and other works that appeared in
1598. Sidney enjoyed in the decade that followed his death the
reputation of a demi-god, and the wide dissemination in print of his
numerous sonnets in 1591 spurred nearly every living poet in England to
emulate his achievement. {429a}

In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets with those
of his contemporaries it will be best to classify the sonnetteering
efforts that immediately succeeded Sidney's under the three headings of

(1) sonnets of more or less feigned love, addressed to a more or less
fictitious mistress;

(2) sonnets of adulation, addressed to patrons; and

(3) sonnets invoking metaphysical abstractions or treating impersonally
of religion or philosophy. {429b}

(1) Collected sonnets of feigned love. Daniel's 'Delia,' 1592.

In February 1592 Samuel Daniel published a collection of fifty-five
sonnets, with a dedicatory sonnet addressed to his patroness, Sidney's
sister, the Countess of Pembroke. As in many French volumes, the
collection concluded with an 'ode.' {429c} At every point Daniel
betrayed his indebtedness to French sonnetteers, even when apologising
for his inferiority to Petrarch (No. xxxviii.) His title he borrowed
from the collection of Maurice Seve, whose assemblage of dixains called
'Delie, objet de plus haute vertu' (Lyon, 1544), was the pattern of all
sonnet-sequences on love, and was a constant theme of commendation among
the