His style is obscure, crabbed, ungrammatical.
Expression only finds a smooth and flowing outlet when the man's nature is profoundly stirred by some powerful emotion, as in the sonnets to Cavalieri, or the sonnets on the deaths of Vittoria Colonna and Urbino, or the sonnets on the thought of his own death.

For the most part, it is clear that he found great difficulty in mastering his thoughts and images.

This we discover from the innumerable variants of the same madrigal or sonnet which he made, and his habit of returning to them at intervals long after their composition.

A good fourth of the Codex Vaticanus consists of repetitions and _rifacimenti_.

He was also wont to submit what he wrote to the judgment of his friends, requesting them to alter and improve.