Edmund William Gosse

“ That Shakespeare was acquainted with Constable’s poetry and admired it seems to be certain, and that he borrowed from it, “gives it,” as Mr Sidney Lee has said, “its most lasting interest.” In the arrangement of his rhymes, Constable usually keeps closer to the Petrarchan model than Daniel and the other contemporary sonneteers are accustomed to do. ”

“ In 1594 he prefixed four sonnets, addressed to the soul of Sir Philip Sidney, to that writer’s Apology of Poetry. A prose work of devotion, The Catholic Moderator (1623) , has been attributed to Constable. Who Diana was has never been determined, but it has been conjectured that she may have been Mary, countess of Shrewsbury, who was a distant cousin of the poet. The body of Constable’s writing is so small, and its authenticity so little supported by evidence, that it is rash to give a very definite opinion as to its character. ”