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Critical opinions of his work have varied widely.

Thomas Warton, the eighteenth century critic, considered Wyatt ' confessedly an inferior ' to his contemporary Henry Howard, and that Wyatt's ' genius was of the moral and didactic species and be deemed the first polished English satirist '.

The 20th century saw an awakening in his popularity and a surge in critical attention.

C. S. Lewis called him ‘ the father of the Drab Age ’ ( i. e. the unornate ), from what Lewis calls the ' golden ' age of the 16th century, while others see his love poetry, with its complex use of literary conceits, as anticipating that of the metaphysical poets in the next century.

More recently, the critic Patricia Thomson, describes Wyatt as " the Father of English Poetry.