nate Century_, No. v., beginning, 'If 't bee not love I feele,
what is it then?' Imitation of Petrarch is a constant characteristic of
the English sonnet throughout the sixteenth century from the date of the
earliest efforts of Surrey and Wyatt. It is interesting to compare the
skill of the early and late sonnetteers in rendering the Italian master.
Petrarch's sonnet _In vita di M. Laura_ (No. lxxx. or lxxxi., beginning
'Cesare, poi che 'l traditor d' Egitto') was independently translated
both by Sir Thomas Wyatt, about 1530 (ed. Bell, p. 60), and by Francis
Davison in his _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602, ed. Bullen, i. 90). Petrarch's
sonnet (No. xcv. or cxiii.) was also rendered independently both by Wyatt
(cf. Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_, ed. Arber, p. 23) and by
Drummond of Hawthornden (ed. Ward, i. 100, 221).

{103a} Eight of Watson's sonnets are, according to his own account,
renderings from Petrarch; twelve are from Serafino dell' Aquila
(1466-1500); four each come from Strozza, an Italian poet, and from
Ronsard; three from the Italian poet Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1548); two
each from the French poet, Etienne Forcadel, known as Forcatulus
(1514?-1573), the Italian Girolamo Parabosco (_fl._ 1548), and AEneas
Sylvius; while many are based on passages from such authors as (among the
Greeks) Sophocles, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes (author of the epic
'Argonautica'); or (among the Latins) Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace,
Propertius, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Martial, and Valerius Flaccus; or
(among other modern Italians) Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) and Baptista
Mantuanus (1448-1516); or (among other modern Frenchmen) Gervasius
Sepinus of Saumur, writer of eclogues after the manner of Virgil and
Mantuanus.

{103b} No importance can be attached to Drayton's pretensions to greater
originality than his neighbours. The very line in which he makes the
claim ('I am no pick-purse of another's wit') is a verbatim theft from a
sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney.

{103c} Lodge's _Margarite_, p. 79. See Appendix IX. for the text of
Desportes's sonnet (_Diane_, livre ii. No. iii.) and Lodge's translation
in _Phillis_. Lodge gave two other translations of the same sonnet of
Desportes--in his romance of _Rosalind_ (Hunterian Society's reprint, p.
74), and in his volume of poems called _Scillaes Metamorphosis_ (p. 44).
Sonnet xxxiii. of Lodge's _Phillis_ is rendered with equal literalness
from Ronsard. But Desportes was Lodge