Edmund Gosse

“ It is certain that this poet enjoyed a great reputation in his lifetime, and that he was not without a direct influence upon the youth of Shakespeare. He was the first, after the original experiment made by Wyat and Surrey, to introduce the pure imitation of Petrarch into English poetry. He was well read in Italian, French and Greek literature. Watson died young, and he had not escaped from a certain languor and insipidity which prevent his graceful verses from producing their full effect. ”

“ This demerit is less obvious in his later than in his earlier pieces, and with the development of the age, Watson, whose contemporaries regarded him as a poet of true excellence, would probably have gained power and music. As it is, he has the honour of being one of the direct forerunners of Shakespeare (in Venus and Adonis and in the Sonnets) , and of being the leader in the long procession of Elizabethan sonnet-cycle writers. (E. G.)
The English works of Watson, excepting the madrigals, were first collected by Edward Arber in 1870. ”

“ To each poem he prefixes a prose introduction in which he frankly indicates, usually with ample quotations, the French, Italian or classical poem which was the source of his inspiration” (Elizabethan Sonnets, p. xxviii.) ”