Note 429a — APPENDIX (continued 2)

In a preface to Newman’s first edition of Astrophel and Stella the editor, Thomas Nash, in a burst of exultation over what he deemed the surpassing merits of Sidney’s sonnets, exclaimed: ‘Put out your rushlights, you poets and rhymers! and bequeath your crazed quatorzains to the chandlers! for lo, here he cometh that hath broken your legs.’ But the effect of Sidney’s work was just the opposite to that which Nash anticipated. It gave the sonnet in England a vogue that it never enjoyed before or since.