SOURCE: Swart, Jacobus. “Sackville's Achievement.” In Thomas Sackville: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Poetry, pp. 121-35. Groningen, Batavia: J. B. Wolters' Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1949.

In the following essay, Swart argues that Sackville's small body of poetry and one play were not as important or original as literary historians have argued.

We have examined Sackville's life and character, and found him a man whom it would have been a privilege to know. Determined, a bit of an autocrat perhaps, but a diplomat full of high purpose, with a wide range of interests and most capable withal. As a young man, quite incidentally, this great statesman produced two pieces of literature. … We have tried to show that between these two works there is a distance of perhaps six or seven years, and we know that the second of them must, in Sackville's eyes, have marked an advance. There seems to be every reason...