It is mainly on historical grounds that mention must be made of his contemporary Thomas Watson (1557-1592). Watson was a busy writer of verse and translator, whose claim to be remembered now rests on this, that he was working at the sonnet beside Sir Philip Sidney, and independently of him. What he called a sonnet was a set of three stanzas of six lines, each complete in itself.[63] There the independence of Watson ends. His sonnets are avowedly imitations of Italian or French originals when they are not translations. But his chief work, the _Hecatompathia, or Passionate Century of Love_, has an undoubted value as a piece of evidence. It supplies a link in the chain of literary history, and then it gives what may be called a glimpse into the workshop of a sonnet-cycle maker. Watson candidly confesses, in a “Letter to the Friendly Reader,” that his pains in suffering the pangs of love which his sonnets record are “but supposed.” His less ingenuous followers leave us to guess as much concerning them. But in addition to this there is an _apparatus criticus_ which in everything except bulk bears a very close resemblance to the pedantic commentaries added by his admirers to the early editions of the Spaniard Góngora. Each sonnet is introduced, explained, annotated, and the passion it is to express described, and we are shown the machinery at every stage. One of these introductions contains what is, in fact, a by no means bad criticism on the whole body of the sonnets. “This Passion,” No. xli., “is framed upon a somewhat tedious, or too much affected, continuation of that figure of Rhetorique whiche of the Greeks is called παλιλλογἱα or ἀναδἰπλωσις, of the Latins Reduplicatio.” Somewhat tedious, too much affected, and full of repetitions are these sonnets; but they show the increased mechanical skill of our writers of verse, and they are historically interesting. When tempted to make autobiography out of the cycles of other sonneteers, it is well to remember Watson’s confession, and also this, that to have a lady for the saint of your literary devotions had been “common form” as far back as the troubadours. His later work, _The Tears of Fancy_, is in regular quatorzains. [SN: _The sonneteers._]