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Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters

Series Editor: Marilyn Gaull


This series presents original biographical, critical, and scholarly studies of literary
works and public figures in Great Britain, North America, and continental Europe
during the nineteenth century. The volumes in Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and
Letters evoke the energies, achievements, contributions, cultural traditions, and indi-
viduals who reflected and generated them during the Romantic and Victorian period.
The topics: critical, textual, and historical scholarship, literary and book history, biog-
raphy, cultural and comparative studies, critical theory, art, architecture, science, pol-
itics, religion, music, language, philosophy, aesthetics, law, publication, translation,
domestic and public life, popular culture, and anything that influenced, impinges
upon, expresses or contributes to an understanding of the authors, works, and events
of the nineteenth century. The authors consist of political figures, artists, scientists,
and cultural icons including William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Charles Darwin, William
Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Taylor, and their contemporaries.
The series editor is Marilyn Gaull, PhD (Indiana University), FEA. She has taught
at William and Mary, Temple University, New York University, and is Research
Professor at the Editorial Institute at Boston University. She is the founder and ed-
itor of The Wordsworth Circle and the author of English Romanticism: The Human
Context, and editions, essays, and reviews in journals. She lectures internationally on
British Romanticism, folklore, and narrative theory, intellectual history, publishing
procedures, and history of science.

PUBLISHED BY PALGR AVE:


Shelley’s German Afterlives, by Susanne Schmid
Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion, by Jeffrey W. Barbeau
Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter, by Peter J. Kitson
Byron, edited by Cheryl A. Wilson
Romantic Migrations, by Michael Wiley
The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, by Matthew Schneider
British Periodicals and Romantic Identit y, by Mark Schoenfield
Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism, by Clare Broome Saunders
British Victorian Women’s Periodicals, by Kathryn Ledbetter
Romantic Diasporas, by Toby R. Benis
Romantic Literary Families, by Scott Krawczyk
Victorian Christmas in Print, by Tara Moore
Culinary Aesthetics and Practices in Nineteenth-Century American Literature,
Edited by Monika Elbert and Marie Drews
Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print, by Alberto Gabriele
Romanticism and the Object, Edited by Larry H. Peer
Poetics en passant, by Anne Jamison
From Song to Print, by Terence Hoagwood
Gothic Romanticism, by Tom Duggett
Victorian Medicine and Social Reform, by Louise Penner
Populism, Gender, and Sympathy in the Romantic Novel, by James P. Carson
Byron and the Rhetoric of Italian Nationalism, by Arnold A. Schmidt
Poetry and Public Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America, by Shira Wolosky
The Discourses of Food in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, by Annette Cozzi
Romanticism and Pleasure, Edited by Thomas H. Schmid and Michelle Faubert
Royal Romances, by Kristin Flieger Samuelian
Trauma, Transcendence, and Trust, by Thomas J. Brennan, S.J.
The Business of Literary Circles in Nineteenth-Century America, by David Dowling
Popular Medievalism in Romantic-Era Britain, by Clare A. Simmons
Beyond Romantic Ecocriticism, by Ashton Nichols
The Poetry of Mary Robinson, by Daniel Robinson

FORTHCOMING TITLES:
Romanticism and the City, by Larry H. Peer
Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination, by Gregory Leadbetter
Romantic Dharma, by Mark Lussier
Regions of Sara Coleridge’s Thought, by Peter Swaab
Th e Poe t ry of M a ry
Robi nson
For m a n d Fa m e

Daniel Robinson
THE POETRY OF MARY ROBINSON
Copyright © Daniel Robinson, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-10025-1
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-28642-3 ISBN 978-0-230-11803-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230118034
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Daniel, 1969–
The poetry of Mary Robinson : form and fame / Daniel Robinson.
p. cm.—(Nineteenth-century major lives & letters)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Robinson, Mary, 1758–1800—Criticism and interpretation.


2. Robinson, Mary, 1758–1800—Poetic works. I. Title.
PR5233.R27Z85 2011
821⬘.6—dc22 2010035168
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: March 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother, Miriam C. Robinson,
the preeminent “Mrs. Robinson”
Poor poet! happy art thou, thus remov’d
From pride and folly!—for in thy domain
Thou can’st command thy subjects;—fill thy lines—
Wield the all-conqu’ring weapon heav’n bestows
In the grey goose’s wing! which, tow’ring high,
Bears thy rich fancy to IMMORTAL FAME !
—Mary Robinson, “The Poet’s Garret”
C on t e n t s

Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Sources and Symbols xi

Introduction: The Wreath of Fame 1


1 Bell’s Laureates I: Robinson’s Avatars and
the Della Crusca Network 15
2 Bell’s Laureates II: . . . So Goes the World 63
3 The English Sappho and the Legitimate Sonnet 111
4 Stuart’s Laureates I: Poets and Politics Perplext 153
5 Stuart’s Laureates II: A Woman of Undoubted Genius 197

Notes 243
Works Cited 257
Index 269
Ac k now l e dgm e n t s

F irst and foremost, I thank Marilyn Gaull for her support and guid-
ance. I hope that the present study proves worthy of the confidence,
encouragement, and direction she has provided to me from its incep-
tion through its publication. At Palgrave, I thank Brigitte Shull, Lee
Norton, and Jo Roberts for their assistance. Portions of chapters four
and five have appeared in The Wordsworth Circle; I am grateful to
Marilyn for permission to republish them in revised form.
My interest in Mary Robinson’s poetry began in 1992 when, dur-
ing my first year in graduate school, I had the good fortune to enroll
in Paula R. Feldman’s graduate seminar on Romantic Poetry. Paula
introduced me to Robinson’s poetry and has been a tireless supporter
of my work since then, particularly as a superlative mentor, inspiring
collaborator, and valued friend.
I am deeply grateful to William Brewer for his invitation to edit
the poetry for Pickering and Chatto’s edition, under his general edi-
torship, of the Works of Mary Robinson. I am indebted to the work of
Stuart Curran and of Judith Pascoe, who, in addition to pioneering
the study of Robinson’s poetry, provided crucial help to me during
the completion of my edition. I am proud to be in the company of
my fellow editors of the Pickering and Chatto edition, but thank es-
pecially Bill Brewer, Hester Davenport, and Dawn Vernooy-Epp for
specific help during this project. I also want to acknowledge a cohort
of Robinsonists (Robinsonians) with whom I have had the pleasure
of working, even if in most cases not actually in person, and of know-
ing, in person, on Facebook, or via email. In addition to those already
named, I have thought of the following as my ideal readers: Ashley
Cross, Tim Fulford, Jacqueline Labbe, Sharon Setzer, Julie Shaffer,
and Lisa Vargo. I thank especially Michael Gamer for his friendship,
insight, and enthusiasm. Thanks also to Julie Wilson at Pickering
and Chatto, Autumn Mather at the Newberry Library, and Kathryn
Hodson at the Libraries of the University of Iowa.
Thanks are due to Stephen C. Behrendt for inviting me to partic-
ipate in his NEH 2010 Summer Seminar, “The Aesthetics of British
x Acknow ledgments

Romanticism, Then and Now,” at the University of Nebraska, where


I finished writing this book. I am grateful to Steve and all of the
participants for their support and camaraderie, with special thanks to
Jason Goldsmith.
At Widener University, I am blessed with a supportive dean,
Matthew Poslusny, to whom I am grateful. I also owe special thanks
to the staff of the Wolfgram Library, especially Susan Tsiouris. I
would be remiss if I did not thank the students who endured a se-
mester of Mary Robinson during the spring of 2010, but who also
greatly enriched my thinking about her poetry. Susan Logsdon’s
insights were particularly brilliant, and I thank her for reading the
manuscript. Thanks to Mark Graybill for being a good friend, valued
colleague, and awesome lead guitarist. Also at Widener, I am fortu-
nate to have as a colleague Janine Utell, who has been a generous
friend and inspiration during this project. I owe her many thanks for
brainstorming, feedback, and encouragement.
As always, I am deeply grateful for the love, support, and patience
of my family, Wendy Warren and Sarah Margaret Robinson.
A No t e on S ou rc e s a n d Sy m bol s

Unless otherwise indicated, my citations of Robinson’s works are


to the Pickering & Chatto edition of the Works of Mary Robinson, by
volume and page and, in the case of poetry, line number(s). In my
edition of the poetry, volumes 1 and 2 of the Works, I present the
poems as they first appeared. When I quote from or refer to items in
newspapers, I have provided the title of the newspaper and the date;
these items do not appear in the list of works cited.
Throughout this book, when discussing poetic form, I designate
the shape of a stanza by rhyme scheme and line length. For syllabic
verse, the subscript numeral indicates the total number of syllables
in the lines that precede it; for accentual or foot verse, the numeral
refers to the number of stresses. I follow Brennan O’Donnell’s
practice (16).
Also, I generally use quotation marks when I refer to a pseudonym
as a signature but do not when discussing the pseudonym as an avatar
(see chapter one).
I n t roduc t ion: Th e Wr e at h
of Fa m e

W here there is so much to admire, we may be excused the unpleas-


ing task of busy censure; we have more satisfaction in listening to the
oracular inspiration which enables us to predict, that the picture of
the fair writer’s mind pourtrayed in these poems, will long outlive
the portrait of her person, though drawn by the pencil of a Reynolds.
She may truly say,

Exegi monumentum ære perennius.1


—Review of Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson,
Analytical Review (July 1791)

The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed the con-
summation of Mary Robinson’s most cherished desire—to be remem-
bered. After nearly 200 years of relative oblivion, Robinson has
become one of the stars of an expanded Romantic literary canon.
Among the previously neglected writers recovered by feminist and
historicist scholars, Robinson stands with Charlotte Smith, Anna
Letitia Barbauld, and Felicia Hemans as the poets who have received
the most attention.2 Unique among them, however, Robinson is the
subject of three biographies published roughly within one year of one
another; and she appears as the character-narrator of a pot-boiling
romance novel that describes her as “a woman who changed history
by doing as she pleased—for money, for fame, for pleasure, and above
all, for love.”3 In a way, this peculiar aspect of Robinson’s current sta-
tus as an icon is a replay of the kind of attention she herself endured.
During her life, Robinson indeed had been the subject of sensational
(fictional) biographies and the victim of scandalous fictional por-
trayals of her love life. Like Lord Byron, Robinson is a writer whose
fascinating life, personal charisma, and phenomenal celebrity make
her an important cultural figure. Indeed, Robinson’s literary com-
positions are only one facet of a remarkable career: she was also an
2 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

actress, sex symbol, courtesan, fashionable spectacle, and the subject


of titillating gossip. Like celebrities today, she was famous for being
famous—or for being notorious. Robinson was a cultural icon long
before she began her literary career as a professional writer, although
some studies tend to give the impression that it was all happening at
once. I, however, see a clear distinction between her cultural celebrity
and her years of literary fame. The period of Robinson’s preliterary
celebrity runs from her stage debut as Shakespeare’s Juliet at Drury
Lane Theatre in 1776 to her escape from England, and especially its
gossip columns and creditors in 1784. After a period of largely undis-
turbed obscurity, she returned to England in 1788 and began a liter-
ary career that lasted until her death at the end of 1800. Robinson,
as a writer, sought fame rather than celebrity. She had had enough of
the latter.
Scholarly work on the recovery of Robinson as an important
Romantic-period writer in her own right began with the publica-
tion of Stuart Curran’s groundbreaking essay “Romantic Poetry:
The I Altered” from Anne K. Mellor’s collection Romanticism
and Feminism (1988). In the 1990s, scholars—chief among them
Judith Pascoe—followed Curran’s lead by pioneering critical
approaches to the study of her poetry. The first extended study of
Robinson as a Romantic-period figure, Pascoe’s book Romantic
Theatricality presents a holistic view of Robinson’s career as a cul-
tural celebrity whose literary compositions are only one facet of the
theatrical modes of spectacle through which Robinson, along with
other Romantic-period figures, performed her publicity. Today,
Robinson’s works are available in new scholarly editions. In 2000,
Broadview Press published Pascoe’s edition of Robinson’s Selected
Poems, the first collection of Robinson’s poetry since an 1824
reprint of her Poetical Works; in 2003, Broadview followed that up
with Julie Shaffer’s edition of Robinson’s novel Walsingham and
Sharon Setzer’s edition of her feminist tract A Letter to the Women
of England, along with her final novel The Natural Daughter. In
the summer of 2010, Pickering and Chatto completed the publica-
tion of the eight-volume Works of Mary Robinson under the general
editorship of William Brewer, providing authoritative editions not
only of Robinson’s poetry but also of her eight published novels,
an unfinished novel, a proto-feminist tract, three plays, several
essays, and an unfinished but revealing autobiography. As part of
the Works, my own edition of her poetry includes more than 400
poems, exclusive of the more than forty-five poems that appeared
in her novels and other prose works.
Introduction 3

The poems in particular perform Robinson’s self-reflexive obses-


sion, not with celebrity, but with literary fame. Like many Romantic-
period writers, she invested in her posterity, a gesture that Andrew
Bennett calls “deferred reception,” which involves the construction of
the poetic identity (2). Arguing that the “Romantic culture of poster-
ity” is masculine, Bennett asserts that women writers wrote “counter-
discourses,” arguing that “it is a convention of feminine poetics of
the period that fame is unsought and unwelcome” (72). He inscruta-
bly includes Robinson in a list of women poets who “are all wary of
such a consequence of writing and publishing” (72). Robinson, how-
ever, rarely figures herself in poses of modesty or diffidence. What
Robinson frequently refers to as “the wreath of fame” is the subject of
the present study. In contrast to the caprices of celebrity, Robinson’s
conception of fame is essentially Petrarchan: the poet makes her own
“wreath of fame” through the composition of immortal verses. It is
appropriate, then, that her rehabilitation as a significant writer began
with Curran’s recognition of Robinson’s poetic merits and the intrin-
sic interest of her poetry.4
But today, Robinson also has the dubious distinction of being
labeled the eighteenth-century Madonna, as both Anne Mellor and
Jacqueline Labbe have done (300; “Mary Robinson’s Bicentennial”
4). Although intended as an allegory of female celebrity culture
empowerment, this comparison is not much different from the iden-
tification of a notorious Greek courtesan as “the Mrs. Robinson of
Greece”—as satirist Peter Pindar did in 1783 (18).5 For a time a suc-
cessful actress, she became a fashionable celebrity and sex symbol, the
subject of gossip and pornography, and eventually a cultural pariah
and an object lesson for young women on the dangers of promiscu-
ity, pleasure seeking, and living beyond one’s means. In the early
1780s, Robinson became known as “Perdita” after rumors began to
circulate of her affair with the Prince of Wales, later George IV, who
supposedly became infatuated with her as the result of her perfor-
mance as Perdita in David Garrick’s adaptation of The Winter’s Tale.
While the Prince only briefly appeared in the press as “Florizel,” the
epithet applied to Robinson persisted throughout that decade, sig-
nifying her status as a royal courtesan and mocking her fall from the
Prince’s favors. It was always maliciously employed—especially after
it became known that the married Robinson secured from the Prince
an annuity in exchange for returning his love letters. During the
1790s, however, her proliferation of various pen names and her suc-
cess as a professional writer partially neutralized the “Perdita” epi-
thet, and it appears less frequently. Ironically, the appellation, which
4 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

was essentially a euphemism for “whore,” persists in the titles of all


three of the recent biographies of Robinson: Paula Byrne’s Perdita:
The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson; Hester
Davenport’s The Prince’s Mistress Perdita: A Life of Mary Robinson;
and Sarah Gristwood’s Perdita: Royal Mistress, Writer, Romantic.
Despite her penchant for sobriquets, Robinson never referred to her-
self by this name.
Nonetheless, the figure of Perdita is integral to Robinson’s celeb-
rity. Much of the research on Robinson’s life and career necessarily
has focused on the titillating and sensational aspects of Robinson
as a cultural figure at whom even Marie Antoinette marveled. Her
celebrity makes her intriguing and accessible to us today in ways
that, say, Barbauld or Hannah More are not. Several recent studies
complement Mellor’s examination of Robinson’s sexualized celebrity
by examining the extent to which Robinson’s contemporary fame is
analogous to celebrity today. In these, Robinson appears as an expert
manipulator of all available media and effectually as her own publicist.
Claire Brock, for instance, considers Robinson a “shrewd” manipu-
lator of her image who was able to capitalize on her publicity even
when it was scandalous; in other words, her literary career, according
to Brock, enabled Robinson to manage her own public relations.
Brock likely would object to my bifurcation of Robinson’s publicity
into pre-literary celebrity and her professional authorship, arguing
that the two are inseparable. In contrast, Tom Mole, while reading
Robinson’s fame as “a distributed, multimedia phenomenon,” finds
Robinson’s avid self-promotion in conflict with her desire to escape
the more ignominious aspects of celebrity (200). Thoroughly estab-
lishing Robinson’s command of “the art of the comeback,” Michael
Gamer and Terry F. Robinson show how Robinson staged her own
cultural revivals from actress to fashionable celebrity and from pop-
culture icon to her dramatic literary debut as part of the pop-culture
phenomenon of Della Cruscan poetry. Certainly, Robinson’s theat-
rical career informs much of her public maneuvering and position-
ing of herself in popular culture of the time. As quite possibly the
first modern multimedia celebrity, Robinson’s physical presence is
more palpable than that of any writer before Byron. Her success as
an actress, for instance, derived largely from her having a body that
looked good in pants when she performed breeches roles such as
Viola in Twelfth Night or Fidelia in The Plain Dealer. Because of our
own familiarity with sex symbols and celebrities of our time, the idea
of the young Prince of Wales becoming infatuated with Robinson
Introduction 5

performing Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is immediately


familiar to us. We have peculiar access, moreover, to Robinson’s sex
life—real and imagined. Her husband’s adultery and her own liai-
sons with several powerful men of her day, including not only the
Prince but also Whig statesman Charles James Fox and her long-time
companion Colonel Banastre Tarleton, she herself confirmed; these
activities and relationships featured prominently in newspaper gossip
columns and satirical prints—in some cases depicting Robinson as
exposing her breasts or, in one particularly vitriolic print, as being
vaginally impaled. In the case of the Prince and Fox, among other
presumed lovers, pornographers narrated Robinson’s sexual encoun-
ters with them.6 What other Romantic-period writer appears to us
in such sexually explicit representations? And without any real evi-
dence, scholars accept as fact the supposition that the debilitating
illness which left her paralyzed and immobile for the final fifteen
years of her life was the result of a miscarriage. While certainly pos-
sible, this supposition reveals a tendency to imagine the more titil-
lating scenario when Robinson’s body is at issue. Most significant
to Robinson’s cultural status is the fact that her physical beauty was
captured by the leading portraitists of the period—John Hoppner,
George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough, and Joshua Reynolds, who
painted her twice—and all of this before she began her literary career
in earnest. But even then her presence manifests itself in innumerable
newspaper puffs, hyperbolic verse tributes by her friends, beautiful
printings of her books, and not least of all in the rhythms, sounds,
and shapes of her poetry.7
My study of Robinson’s poetry picks up in the aftermath of her
previous celebrity, which continues to resonate throughout her career;
but I want to foreground Robinson as a working poet in the instant
of her poems’ publicity, most often as they first appeared in newspa-
pers attached to various pseudonyms. As Pascoe observes, Robinson
employed her pseudonyms “to proliferate herself” (Romantic 174).
My interest in that poetry is to examine fame as a poetic trope, a recur-
ring motif even, through the course of her career as a poet. Although
this book is about fame, it is not really a cultural study of celebrity;
that work is well underway.8 Focusing on her poetry, I do not see
Robinson as a shameless self-promoter capitalizing on her fame and
on her infamy so much as I see her as a former celebrity attempting to
do something more meaningful and lasting with her talents. In what
follows, I mean to draw a distinction between her cultural celebrity
and her quest for literary fame—not because I believe she, as a public
6 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

figure, could actually choose one over the other, but because I think
her desire for poetic fame was born out of her awareness of a fine line
between her celebrity and ignominy.
This sense of literary accomplishment as a means of making good
a tarnished reputation informs nearly everything she wrote, par-
ticularly as it pertains to the forms in which she chose to write.
I focus here on Robinson’s poetry because she believed poetry to
be her “wreath of fame,” earned by demonstrable merit, by intel-
lectual prowess, and particularly by mastery of poetic form—and I
do intend the gendered connotation, as she would have done. As I
will explain over the course of this book, Robinson regarded poetic
fame since Sappho as essentially masculine, but not irretrievably so.
Throughout her literary career she consistently affiliates herself with
powerful male figures, doing so politically with statesmen such as
Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, professionally with newspaper
proprietors and publishers such as John Bell and Daniel Stuart,
and culturally with figures of artistic genius from the past such as
Petrarch, Milton, and Pope and from among contemporaries such
as Robert Merry, Joshua Reynolds, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Robinson practiced a poetics of form and fame that involves these
powerful male figures. For example, in her Monody to the Memory
of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1792), she clearly articulates her theory that
the artist through the successful manipulation of the formal ele-
ments of his craft earns through this effort his own “laurel,” the
classic symbol of poetic fame. According to Robinson, Reynolds,
in the creative act of painting his portraits, “with a fost’ring hand,
to genius just, / Twin’d his own laurel, round each youthful bust”
(1: 175; 89–90). The laurel is a metaphor for literal, textual accom-
plishment—the poem or painting itself peculiarly achieved by the
creative genius. The ultimate accolade, however, is immortality, an
article of faith that Robinson maintains throughout her career; as
such, she contends that the ultimate vindication of genius is inevi-
table. Upon his death, Reynolds may, “true to native worth, assert
his claim / To the best diadem! THE WREATH OF FAME !” (93–94).
Just as Robinson confers upon Reynolds the distinction of being
“Britain’s R AFFAELLE” (46), she repeatedly asserts her own claim
to the “wreath of fame” as “the English Sappho,” as she was called.
Robinson’s tribute, moreover, is inflected by the fact that Reynolds
represented her in his painting. But as an artist herself, Robinson
understands that she, like Reynolds, must vindicate her worth
through the form of her art.
Introduction 7

Robinson had a confidence in her poetry that, given her disappear-


ance for two centuries, may seem absurd. But she knew that her liter-
ary afterlife could not be as shrewdly manipulated as some celebrities
manage their more ephemeral publicity. For instance, Robinson’s
proto-feminist tract, A Letter to the Women of England (1799), con-
cludes with a “List of British Female Literary Characters Living in
the Eighteenth Century,” including herself, Barbauld, Elizabeth
Inchbald, Hannah More, Smith, Helen Maria Williams, and Mary
Wollstonecraft, among others. This list is curiously impartial because
it is not necessarily a list of the best women writers but, rather, merely
a list of women writers. Robinson adds to it,

There are various degrees of merit in the compositions of the female writ-
ers mentioned in the preceding list. Of their several claims to the wreath
of Fame, the Public and the critics are left to decide. Most of them have
been highly distinguished at the tribunal of literature. (8: 163)

Discussing such matters as literary merit has proven to be difficult


when it comes to the recovery of noncanonical writers because,
frankly, much of their writing does not seem to be as good as that of
the more familiar writers whom we are better equipped to read and to
explicate. As Susan J. Wolfson remarks, in relation to the question of
whether or not Hemans’ poetry is any good, or if it is as good as that of
Byron or Keats, this kind of question is “culturally over- determined”
(Borderlines 35). Wolfson’s work reminds us that we have had more
than two centuries to shape the ways in which readers experience and
appreciate the so-called Big Six Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats). For writers who have been
absent from our own reading lists during that time, it is not so much
a matter of recovering them as it is of recovering ways of understand-
ing them. We should remember that, at the end of Robinson’s career,
Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s were not off to particularly auspicious
starts; and critics would ridicule Wordsworth’s poetry for several
years to come. For Robinson, her own investment in poetic merit, her
claim “to the wreath of Fame,” was everything. And, desperate for
money and for health, at the end of a career of remarkable vicissitudes
and of a life that spanned only a little more than four decades, all
Robinson could do was make that claim as vehemently, as ferociously
even, as she could.9
My personal starting point whenever I return to Robinson’s
poetry is her poetic correspondence with Coleridge and the fact that
8 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Coleridge considered her to be a good poet. Her poems to him were


among her final compositions, and one of them, “Mrs. Robinson to
the Poet Coleridge,” confirms that he shared with her his master-
piece, “Kubla Khan,” 16 years before he published it. Coleridge also
wrote several admiring poems to her. As we shall see, Robinson’s lit-
erary career from start to finish is distinguished by this kind of poetic
and quasi-erotic exchange. And the exchange between Robinson and
Coleridge mirrors that between Robert Merry, writing as “Della
Crusca,” and Hannah Cowley, writing as “Anna Matilda.” Indeed,
Robinson’s poetic career was established and conditioned by her own
association with Merry and with his nom de plume. Robinson’s affili-
ations with male poets, chief among them Merry and Coleridge, is
crucial to understanding her conception of her own poetry in terms
of form and fame. Rather than presume that Coleridge “uncritically
but chivalrously overestimated ‘Perdita’s’ work,” as Earl Leslie Griggs
long ago suggested (91), I want to investigate just what it is about her
poetry itself that pleased him, and to consider the possibility that the
erotic and the poetic are not mutually exclusive interests that result
invariably in an overheated overestimate. I am not suspending the
erotic element; rather, I am casting it in a different light, one that
is formally illuminating. We miss an integral feature of Robinson’s
poetry if we read Coleridge’s specific remarks on Robinson’s metrical
facility as merely the result of erotic confusion. While her poetry is
hardly flawless, Robinson’s lyrical ebullience is measured—literally
metered—by a technical rigor that displays formal affinities with not
only the lyric poets of the second half of the eighteenth century who
likely influenced her, but also with those later poets who employ
innovative lyrical forms—poets such as Southey, Wordsworth, Scott,
Byron, Tennyson, and Poe. While I am not willing to go so far as
Stuart Curran does in asserting that “she changed the very nature
of the craft of poetry” (“Mary Robinson” 9), I do see Robinson
as a significant transitional figure in the history of English poetic
form. My purpose here is not to make grand claims for Robinson’s
importance but, rather, to show how she works to earn it. Poetic
forms and poetic pseudonyms function as ways of representing her
claim to poetic fame. In much of what follows, therefore, I am fol-
lowing Curran’s lead: he urges Robinson’s readers “to revert to the
centrality of poetic technique and to the essential critical justice of
Coleridge’s observation” (“Mary Robinson” 16). Poetic form is a
kind of networking for Robinson by which she participates in a web
of social interaction and literary intertextuality in order to achieve
professional legitimacy, recognition, and fame.10
Introduction 9

Coleridge’s assessment thus provides a teleology for this book,


which examines Robinson’s poetic career in terms of her representa-
tions of herself as a poet and her poetry through form. Robinson’s
poetry has been denied the close reading and formal analysis that
provided the foundations for the study of poets such as Wordsworth
and Coleridge over the past 200 years. Because formal approaches are
not so prevalent as they once were but are still necessary for under-
standing the poetics of the writers who constellate our field of vision
(including, now, Robinson), I feel it is incumbent on me, writing
the first book-length study of her poetry, to draw attention to the
workings of her verse, particularly as it functions intertextually. In
focusing on reading Robinson’s forms, I see her engaging some of
the questions Wolfson has identified as central to “Romantic formal-
ism,” given the reputation the period’s poets traditionally have had as
iconoclasts:

Does [Romantic-period poetry’s] highly formed language compro-


mise its effort to participate in political and social discourse? Or does
this formal difference distinguish, indeed establish, the unique agency
of poetry to address the wider arena of national and cultural self-
reflection? (“Romanticism” 223)

While my interest is not so much in Romanticism as a general aes-


thetic, I do see Robinson as working “uncertainly” with a similarly
“formalist poetics” as the poets Wolfson examines (“Romanticism”
223). If Wordsworth and Coleridge had, as Hazlitt suggests, a revo-
lutionary poetics, Robinson, a generation older than they were, is
generally more committed to a conservative one, in terms of working
with eighteenth-century forms; but her application of those forms
to her later radical perspective is complicatedly progressive—as the
juxtaposition of Robinson’s politics in chapters two and four will
show.11
My purpose here is to show her at work and at play in the medium
that I believe she herself most enjoyed—poetry. Although she wrote in
nearly every literary genre and form available to her, Robinson clearly
regarded poetry as her most significant claim to fame. Her daughter
understood this as well; the Memoirs published after Robinson’s death
never delve into her fiction, placing great emphasis on her poetry and
on her metrical skills:

The productions of Mrs. Robinson, both in prose and verse, are


numerous, and of various degrees of merit: but to poetry the native
10 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

impulse of her genius appears to have been more peculiarly directed:


even in the earliest of her productions, that fertility of imagination,
and correctness of taste, were indicated, which, in her subsequent
compositions, are so eminently displayed. The sweetness and harmony
of her versification has been scarcely equalled, and certainly never
surpassed, by any cotemporary poet: neither, while attending to the
flow and melody of her numbers, has Mrs. Robinson been unmind-
ful of the force and dignity of the sentiment expressed. (Memoirs 2:
175–6).

While certainly we cannot expect critical objectivity from the friend


charged with the continuation of the unfinished autobiography and
thus with the preservation of Robinson’s fame, these remarks are
not as hyperbolic as they may seem: the “friend” who continues the
Memoirs where Robinson left off, either Maria Elizabeth Robinson
or, as Hester Davenport convincingly suggests, Samuel Jackson
Pratt (Works of Mary Robinson 7: xxi), makes no grand claim for the
profundity or the sophistication of Robinson’s poetry. Indeed, the
emphasis is rightly placed on her stylistic proficiency—“the sweet-
ness and harmony of her versification” and “the flow and melody
of her numbers.” Her skillful metrical practice, as Coleridge also
recognized in appreciating her “ear,” is Robinson’s most significant
literary accomplishment. But it is a talent that remains underappreci-
ated in the recovery of Robinson as a Romantic-period writer, and
has gone largely untreated by anyone except Curran (and myself)
since 1801.
As this book aims to show, such formal considerations ought
to be established as fundamental to the reading of her poetry. The
study of Robinson’s obvious pleasure in crafting extravagant poetic
form ought to be governed by Wimsatt and Beardsley’s maxim
that “it is just as important to observe what meter a poem is writ-
ten in . . . as it is to observe what language the poem is written in”
(596). More recently, in her study Formal Charges, Wolfson asserts
that, for Romantic-period poetry, “choices of form and the way it
is managed often signify as much as, and as part of, words them-
selves” (3).12 As I will show, Robinson and her readers were sensi-
tive to such formal choices and the management of them. Robinson,
moreover, was particularly innovative, or at least highly adventurous,
in her formal choices. These innovations set her apart from other late
eighteenth-century poets. Donald Wesling points out that Romantic
poets worked largely in familiar verse forms that were not altogether
different from those of their predecessors, although there was indeed
Introduction 11

a drastic shift in the way they employed and thought about them
(68). Robinson employs many of these same familiar forms—blank
verse, Spenserian stanzas, sonnets, odes, hymnal measures—but she
also devises many of her own forms, “nonce” forms, and can boast
of greater stanzaic variety than Wordsworth or Coleridge. If, as John
Hollander says in “Romantic Verse Form and the Metrical Contract,”
the choice of a metrical scheme indicates, like a title, “what sort of
thing the poem is supposed to be” (189), then Robinson’s contempo-
rary readers could tell that they were in for something highly original.
As I have indicated, other studies of Robinson’s life and career have
begun reconstructing the cultural significance of her performative
celebrity and her literary representations of herself; but just as impor-
tant is the reconstruction of the period’s apprehension of form as an
element readable in and of itself, and poets’ deliberate participation in
the formal engagement. Robinson was aware of this when she chose
to write a poem in a particular form, so we should be too.
Indeed, contemporary commentary on Robinson, while generally
favorable, rarely commends her poetry in more specific terms than
“poetical,” “elegant,” or “harmonious,” although these terms are
not without meanings more precise than are apparent. In many ways,
Robinson’s poetry is like pop music: it is technically proficient—
slick even—but not always intended to convey great profundity. As
one reviewer remarked, Robinson “certainly possesses a brilliancy
of fancy, and command of poetical language; but the ear is oftener
addressed than the heart in her productions” (Rev. of Sappho 114).
And reviewers generally praised the poetry in Robinson’s novels
while lambasting the prose. In this regard, I disagree with Sharon M.
Setzer who, introducing the predominantly negative reviews of The
Natural Daughter, suggests that “the reiterated praise for Robinson’s
poetry [is] a coercive gesture, reinscribing a feminine ideal of beau-
tiful, but largely ineffectual, expressiveness” (327). While I would
never presume the absence of ulterior motives, I do find most of
the criticisms of Robinson’s fiction to be valid; one critic remarks,
“We regret that the author will not confine her labours to poetry,
in which she superiorly excels, and has given fresh proofs of in this
Novel” (qtd. in Setzer, Natural 329). The novel in the 1790s was
still gendered feminine, so critical approbation of her poetic skills
such as this, rather than her strengths in writing fiction, ought not to
be dismissed. Moreover, as I hope to show, Robinson’s formal prac-
tices are fundamentally masculine and resist the reinscription of “a
feminine ideal.” Terms such as beauty or elegant were not dismissive
12 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

gendered codes for women writers, appearing frequently in reviews of


male poets as well as of female. Many writers proudly advertised their
own works as being elegant. And publishers would make sure the
word elegant appeared in the titles of anthologies: a 1791 collection
of poetry called Extracts, Elegant, Instructive, and Entertaining, in
Poetry; from the Most Approved Authors is a formidable, wide-ranging
two volume collection that includes only a handful of poems by
women poets Barbauld and Ann Yearsley among hundreds of poems
by Spenser, Milton, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Cowper. Another anthol-
ogy entitled The Beauties of Literature, or Elegant Extracts in Prose
(1794) features only male writers such as Plutarch, Cicero, Sterne,
Samuel Johnson, and Swedenborg.
Robinson’s poetry resists the gendered binaries that have become
an unfortunate by-product of the recovery of women writers and that
originally privileged women’s fiction as a “literature of their own.”
But I argue that Robinson herself sees poetry as a masculine genre
and thus plays on (admittedly) essentialized notions of gender and
form in order to transgress them, to compete with men poets, and
to surpass women poets. She understood that working in difficult
poetic forms would distinguish her poetry from that of the “poet-
ess.” As Paula R. Backscheider puts it, “Poetry is devilishly hard to
write—for men and women” (17). Robinson, therefore, shared some
of the sexist assumptions for which we might criticize her male con-
temporaries. Because of this, the study of her poetry requires working
from some basic assumptions about gender and genre. It also requires
the recognition that Robinson participated in what she considered
to be masculine literary traditions that were inherently more chal-
lenging and valuable. This book, therefore, foregrounds the fact that
Robinson consistently and purposively affiliated herself with power-
ful male figures. This may be an uncomfortable truth to some, but
it is true nonetheless. Robinson’s poetry does not sit well in isolation
with her female contemporaries. In British Romanticism, a field so
monolithically dominated by six male poets, the isolation of women’s
writing as separate but equal, as advocated by Isobel Armstrong for
the purposes of recovery, was necessary to liberate their work from
formal and aesthetic ideologies that we now recognize as severely
limiting to the study of writers of both sexes.13 Two major schol-
arly achievements stand out in my mind as having consummated the
work of understanding women’s poetry on its own terms: Paula R.
Feldman’s British Women Poets of the Romantic Era is the most com-
plete and diverse collection of texts, showing the immense variety of
Introduction 13

forms and interests during the period; and Paula R. Backshcheider’s


Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry is an in-depth
study of how women poets worked in those forms that definitively
integrate them into literary history. Now, as Beth Lau asserts, we are
ready to move beyond recovery and to study “interrelations between
literary men and women” (3). Studies such as Wolfson’s Borderlines,
Stephen C. Behrendt’s British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing
Community, and Lau’s collection Fellow Romantics demonstrate new
interest in showing men and women writers of the period in dialogue
and literary interaction. Wolfson’s book treats gender as a kind of
literary form itself, which employs language that can provide a mul-
tiplicity of valences. As Wolfson shows, gender in literature is practi-
cally another kind of intertextuality, with masculine and feminine
subjectivities free to employ language and figures that perform liter-
ary cross-dressing. Behrendt, too, takes a fresh look at intertextuality
as a complex web that interconnects men and women poets of the
period and shows that they shared many of the same assumptions
about gender and genre. The tendency in the past may have been to
lament these in women and to castigate them in men, but objectively
we must see these assumptions as part of the fabric of the period. And
Pascoe rightly reminds us that making new generalizations about
women poets as if they shared some common poetic aesthetic is just
as problematically monolithic as the phallocentric Romantic ideology
from which we have sought to liberate them (see “ ‘Unsex’d’ ”).
In what follows, I focus on Robinson’s representations of herself
as a poet in interaction with other poets and other poems, and on
how she tends to formalize these representations in specific instances
of self-conscious virtuosity. I also highlight how Robinson’s maneu-
verings, her affiliations, and her opportunism figured around her
associations with Merry and Coleridge as poetic bookends, with Bell
and Stuart as professional ones. The first chapter proposes a method
for understanding the most important aspect of her poetical self-
representations—her pseudonyms, which I call avatars because they
are neither costumes nor disguises but versionings of her poetic iden-
tity. Because I argue that Robinson’s greatest virtue is her metrical
virtuosity, I want to show, also in chapter one, how the start of her
career as a professional poet is grounded in a ludic-erotic poetics that
is established by her association with Merry as Della Crusca. The gen-
erally reviled poetry of the Della Cruscans is more playful than critics
have given it credit for being. But, as I will show in chapter two, the
ludic impulses of the Della Crusca network cannot be sustained in
14 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the political atmosphere of the early 1790s. Here, Robinson becomes


involved in the careful construction of her Laura Maria pseudonym,
first as an avatar of baroque elegance for the branding of Bell’s pub-
lications, then as an avatar of complicated political ambivalence by
which she manages to avoid the ignominious fate of Della Crusca.
Chapter three examines the way Robinson negotiates her new iden-
tity as “the English Sappho” as a means of distancing herself from
the “Perdita” epithet by laying claim to that mantle with her sonnet
sequence Sappho and Phaon, which, as I will show, involves a kind of
privileging of masculine traditions established by Ovid and Petrarch
over the feminine lyric tradition associated with the original Sappho.
Chapter four has Robinson returning to the newspaper business hav-
ing emerged from an intertextual past back to her present, returning
to newsprint with more politically oppositional avatars such as Portia
and Tabitha Bramble. In chapter four, I examine Robinson’s partici-
pation in a new professional network at the Morning Post that includes
Coleridge and Southey. My final chapter considers her new interest in
narrative poetry and the composition of new meters, original stanzas,
or nonce forms through the lens of Coleridge’s perspective on her
work. The book concludes with a close reading of Robinson’s poetic
response to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” that uncovers the affinities
in their poetic correspondence with Robinson’s original association
with Della Crusca. Indeed, as I will show, Robinson’s poetic career
is framed by associations with Robert Merry and with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and with many other literary, intertextual, and profes-
sional assignations in between.
Chapter 1

Be l l’s L au r e at es I: Robi nson’s


Avata r s a n d t h e D e l l a C rusc a
Ne t wor k

Are you Anna Matilda, or Della Crusca, or Laura Maria?


Comical creatures! they have made me shed many a tear, though I
never more than half understood them.
—Robinson, The Natural Daughter (1799)

I n this brief passage from her final novel, Robinson provides the
best commentary of the past 200 years on what the so-called Della
Cruscans were doing in their poetry. With good humor, Robinson
parodies yet implicitly defends the poetry that made her famous and
that she never completely abandoned. In The Natural Daughter,
the heroine, Martha Morley, after attempting a career on the stage,
turns to poetry as a professional recourse. Mirroring some elements
of Robinson’s own history, Martha endures the vicissitudes of being
a professional woman writer and, in dire straits, determines to seek
the patronage of an aristocratic woman. In order to earn this support,
Martha is put on display as a young “poetess” before a group of ladies
and gentleman, who are, in the words of the potential patron, “ ‘sev-
eral excellent judges and some successful authors’ ” (7: 132). Thus
humiliated she must read aloud from her odes, which she describes
as “rather allegorical than serious” in order to assure her potential
patron that they are not “pathetic” or mournfully sad (7: 131). Here,
Robinson makes an important point about her own odes—a form, at
this time, in which she had not worked for several years but one that
16 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

early on defined her poetry as “Della Cruscan.” As Martha suggests,


the allegorical nature of these odes makes them not “serious,” which
I take to mean not “weighty or grave,” not possessing great complex-
ity; rather, these poems are pleasantly diverting. As it turns out, how-
ever, Martha’s ode “To the Blue-Bell” has a political subtext that fails
to amuse most of her aristocratic audience. The poem concludes,

Then why dispute this wide domain,


Since NATURE knows no partial care?
The nipping blast, the pelting rain,
Both will with equal ruin share:
Then what is vain DISTINCTION, say,
But the short blaze of summer’s day?
And what is pomp, or beauty’s boast?
An empty shadow, seen and lost!
Such is thy power,
Vain flower!

Only a “liberal nobleman” defends Martha’s poem as “ ‘truly poeti-


cal,’ ” asserting that “ ‘the moral lesson which they teach is excellent’ ”
(7: 134). He obviously gets the allegory, but his praise of the poem
as “poetical” is an appreciation of what the poet is doing with form;
he recognizes the poem’s unique and ingenious form: ababccdd4e2e2.
The strength of the poem is the successful marrying of its “lesson”
with a charming lyrical form. Robinson’s greatest strength as a poet
is her ability to work in form, demonstrating her command of tradi-
tional forms, such as the heroic couplet, blank verse, and the sonnet,
as well as her inventiveness in creating her own original, or nonce,
forms, such as the stanza of “To the Blue-Bell.” This poem is homo-
strophic because Robinson performs the same stanza throughout the
poem. Not all odes do this, nor do all of Robinson’s poems do this,
but she makes a clear formal choice to portray her heroine as a poet
who works in fixed forms. Indeed, each of the interpolated poems
in The Natural Daughter is a unique, fixed form that stands in stark
contrast to the loose, at times rambling, and hurried feel of the prose
narrative.
This scene is itself a striking and playful moment of self-reflexivity
as Robinson draws attention to herself as author of the novel in relation
to her other poetic identities: one “venerable dowager” remarks, “ ‘I
suppose she is one of the Julias or Sapphos of the present day. I never
read their productions without being amused beyond measure—poor
things’ ” (7: 133). Robinson began using the “Julia” pseudonym in
1791, when several of her poems signed thus appeared in John Bell’s
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 17

newspaper the Oracle. And, of course, Robinson had been known


as “the English Sappho” since the publication by John Bell of her
first volume of poems in 1791. Complementing the self-reflexivity
of the scene, Martha’s poem itself had appeared in the Morning Post
on 5 April 1799 as the work of “Mrs. Robinson.” Facetiously, then,
Robinson repurposes her previously published poem as the work of
Martha Morley, who, before she begins reciting, is asked by a young
lady, “ ‘Pray, ma’am, do you write in the newspapers?’ ” And, adding
to Martha’s mortification, the young lady teasingly asks, “ ‘Are you
Anna Matilda, or Della Crusca, or Laura Maria? Comical creatures!
they have made me shed many a tear, though I never more than half
understood them’ ” (7: 133). Alluding to her early career, Robinson
pokes fun at herself and at Hannah Cowley (Anna Matilda) and
Robert Merry (Della Crusca) for writing the hugely popular poetry
that frequently also was criticized for being no more than glittering
nonsense. Robinson, writing with comical deadpan, has the earnest
and mortified Martha refute the association, “ ‘I never wrote under
either of those signatures,’ said Mrs. Morley.’ ” Robinson winks wryly
at her readers with “either,” ironically owning up to her alter-ego
Laura Maria. Of course, this is all in fun because her readers had
known she was Laura Maria since 1791, when she claimed the “feigned
signatures” of Laura, Laura Maria, and Oberon in the preface to her
Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson. As this moment in The Natural Daughter
proves, Robinson never disavows her connection to the so-called
Della Cruscans, although the Memoirs, concerned with the preserva-
tion and perpetuation of her literary reputation, does: “dazzled by
the false metaphors and rhapsodical extravagance of some contempo-
rary writers, she suffered her judgment to be misled and her taste to
be perverted: an error of which she became afterwards sensible” (7:
279). Although she engages in some mild self-parody, this episode of
The Natural Daughter is a reminder that the poetry of Della Crusca
and his pseudonymous associates originally was all in good fun.
At the time of writing The Natural Daughter, Robinson also
was reviving Laura Maria in the columns of the Morning Post. She
signed “Laura Maria” to a tributary poem to Samuel Jackson Pratt
on 25 July 1799 and continued to use it while working for Daniel
Stuart at the Morning Post throughout 1800. Robinson originally
designed the avatar in 1789 for Bell’s newspaper The Oracle, but she
had not used the pseudonym since her poem “To Zephyrus. Written
in August, 1793” appeared in the Oracle on 7 January 1794. From
1789 until then, it had been her principal pseudonym. So, five years
later, her revival of Laura Maria in the newspaper coincides with her
18 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

reminder in The Natural Daughter of Laura Maria’s connection to


Della Crusca and Anna Matilda. At the end of her career, Robinson
clearly then wished to rekindle also the popular sensation that helped
her begin it by reminding her readers that newspaper poetry is meant
to be playful and fun, and that she was not ashamed of writing it.
Before it was attacked for being a degenerate “school of poetry,” the
so-called Della Cruscans, those writers who corresponded with Della
Crusca and those who effected the publication of it, created a popular
culture phenomenon but were also a professional network into which
Robinson insinuated herself in order to get her career off the ground.
Literary and professional networking in the London newspapers is
how Robinson begins and ends her career.
While she certainly enjoyed participating in various more or less
private coteries throughout her life, as a poet she pursued the pub-
licity of professional and literary networks, founded on transmission
and proliferation. In this book, I focus on Robinson’s principal forum
for her poetry—the newspaper—but also on the way her poetry net-
works with other texts, paratexts, contexts, and intertexts in that par-
ticular space. Crucial to the idea of the network is the space in which
it exists: originally, for the Della Crusca network, for instance, this is
the newspaper, a kind of textual heterotopia where different actors—
the writers and the poems themselves—cross temporal, textual, and
aesthetic boundaries.1 This establishment of a public literary network
with a shared ethos requires someone like Bell, who published first
the World and then the Oracle, or like Stuart, who published the
Morning Post; these businessmen had a commercial commitment to
popular taste and the means to facilitate the network and provide a
space for it. Bell is a conduit through which the Della Crusca network
happens, just as Stuart is for the network of writers who worked for
him at the Morning Post. The key to understanding the nature of
this kind of network is the paratextual evidence found in the newspa-
per publication—but not usually reprinted in the book publications.
There are commercial reasons for this, of course. In the newspapers,
poetry served a purpose much in the way the comics section does in
today’s papers; it filled space when needed and provided diversion for
readers. Because, in the paper, the poems are ephemeral and literally
disposable, they ought to be playful, sensational, and, frankly, easy
to read. Every feature of the publication of these poems is meant to
contribute to the facility of appreciation, which also suggests a cor-
responding facility of composition.
Robinson’s newspaper poetry, particularly in the amorous play of
poetic exchange or the social commentary of political satire for public
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 19

consumption, therefore, shows how she was able to adopt the strate-
gies of the network she wants to join. I have organized this study
around the two publishers who represent the two principal networks
in which Robinson participated as a contributor of newspaper verse.
She affiliated herself first with Bell and then later with Stuart, mak-
ing herself their laureate in order to facilitate her professional career
but also her pursuit of poetic fame. Her participation, then, in each of
these networks is chiefly a professional literary collaboration. In this
respect, Robinson’s creation of a repertoire of pseudonyms, which
I call avatars, and the deployment of those avatars within the shift-
ing contexts of her networks, is just as important as the performative
nature of her poetic self. In other words, Robinson’s adoption of a
poetic persona is performative insofar as it disembodies herself from
her public history, and insofar as it as it re-appropriates her self from
celebrity, from her place of public spectacle, for a career in words and
texts. We should read the poetic performances of Robinson’s avatars—
indeed, their performativity—then, not only as acting in a theatrical
sense but in a formal sense as per-forming or (en)acting through form.
In other words, although it may inform her poetic avatars, Robinson’s
background as an actress need not overdetermine the way we read her
pseudonyms. As a working poet who contributed to several news-
papers and who sought professional recognition, Robinson follows
a long tradition of pseudonymous periodical publication by which
many emerging writers establish themselves. Robinson, however, is
always re-emerging and re-establishing herself.
Despite the fact that she was an actress, Robinson’s use of pseud-
onyms is not necessarily any more theatrical than, say, Jonathan Swift,
Joseph Addison, and Richard Steele sharing the “Isaac Bickerstaff”
pseudonym or Benjamin Franklin writing to the New England
Courant as the female “Silence Dogood” in the 1740s. Pascoe offers
many different explanations for Robinson’s practice—from “theatrical
impulse” to “legerdemain” to “disguises” to “a fragmented self” to
“performance on demand” (175–80). While any one of these expla-
nations is at least partly true in some instances, I have come to the
conclusion that Robinson’s use of pseudonyms cannot be explained
by any one coherent theory that seeks the constitution of Robinson’s
biographical or authorial self. It is also tempting to invoke Foucault’s
“What Is an Author?” as Pascoe does (176). I find Robert J. Griffin’s
elaboration of Foucault to be pertinent to my understanding of what
Robinson is doing: Griffin explains that Foucault “theorized that one
aspect of the author-function was the way, in the act of writing, it
produced multiple selves; his example is the distinction of voices in
20 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

a text and their relation to the person writing” (890). Of course,


Griffin’s point—and Foucault’s—more directly applies to the autho-
rial concept that is “Mrs. Mary Robinson,” an identity which ulti-
mately assimilates (or attempts to) the various signatures. Robinson’s
avatars, in a sense, allegorize the “aspect of the author-function”
Griffin describes. Furthermore, the nature of the avatar is to evade
any attempt to render a coherent writerly subjectivity; the avatar is
protean, a refraction of identity, one potentially of many.
Robinson deploys a range of avatars depending on text, context,
or whim. Robinson’s signatures, I contend, are formal features of the
poems to which they are attached. I read them as incidental attributes
of the literary text; so, as such, they resound in paratextual, contex-
tual, and intertextual voices and echoes. We may read the pseudony-
mous signature attached to a poem just as we read its title, epigraph,
or footnote. I tend to resist, therefore, imagining a fictional authorial
persona or character that Robinson is performing—except when it is
clear she is doing that. But even then, as we shall see, attempting to
understand the signature as a coherent character can be exasperating.
Even trying to slot Robinson’s pseudonymity into a taxonomy such
as the useful one Paula R. Feldman suggests for Romantic-period
women poets is problematic (“Women” 286–7). The only reliable
way to read Robinson’s pseudonymous signature is to understand its
textual presence as a formal choice the poet has made, like choosing to
write a sonnet instead of an ode. Robinson’s pseudonyms are unique
because of their multiplicity in the context of the newspapers with
which she was affiliated and also because of the way each instance
of a pseudonym attached to a poem involves its particular textual
circumstance and does not necessarily involve other instances of the
same pseudonym. As I will show in what follows, Robinson’s Oberon
avatar is rich with allusion but is not a character that informs the
group of poems that carry the “Oberon” signature. Each signature
contributes to a Venn diagram of multiple referents for its specific
instance. Building on Pascoe’s and Feldman’s explanations, I want to
demonstrate how fluid and amorphous Robinson’s pseudonyms are;
they sometimes mean this, they sometimes mean that, but ultimately
they mean “Mary Robinson”—whatever that is.
Robinson’s avatars allow for a kind of fantastic ludic play while
also representing the propagation of her poetic self for professional
aggrandizement and for literary fame. She learned this from Della
Crusca. I use the term avatar because I want to distinguish the Della
Cruscan use of pen names from the trope of pseudonym-as-costume,
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 21

which is limiting because it assumes that the pseudonyms are


characters with coherence and consistency. But my conception of
pseudonym-as-avatar also distinguishes Robinson’s avatars from the
trope of pseudonym-as-disguise, which provides a writer with ways
of effacing his or her authentic self for protection from persecution
or prosecution, as would become necessary in Pitt’s England after
1794; or the public disguise which allows for the preservation of
one’s sense of a more legitimate authorial self, as Southey, for exam-
ple, used pseudonyms for his newspaper verse as a way of maintaining
the integrity of his actual signature. Southey uses his pen names and
anonymity to hide, to elide from his professional self the commercial
exchange of occasional poetry for money. Robinson never really uses
her pseudonyms this way and continues to use certain pseudonyms
even after her true identity is known. In other words, it does not
matter if people know her true identity because the pseudonym is just
another version of her authorial self. Robinson uses her pen-names
not merely to network with actual associates but to network with
popular culture and literary tradition. The avatar is the figurative
incarnation of the textual and contextual identity adopted by a poet,
and thus allows for a multiplicity of poetic performances. Any one of
Robinson’s avatars, to put it another way, is not unlike a brand-name.
But, at the same time, I would argue that this proliferation is not
merely self-promotion, although that is certainly one of Robinson’s
goals in nearly everything that she wrote; instead, I see Robinson’s
pseudonyms as fundamentally literary in that they inform the reading
of the poems to which they are attached.
I focus on Robinson’s poetry as it appears in newspapers because
this is where she primarily used the avatars – with the notable excep-
tion of Ainsi va le monde, which I discuss in chapter two.2 Since
Robinson’s use of avatars is neither more nor less authentic or per-
formative, each avatar is simply another version of a potential poetic
self, one that is partly a refraction of a professional self and one that
we cannot assume to be coherent; the network of texts and authors
established by the newspaper provides a means for generating a mul-
tiplicity of selves instead of effacing or disguising the self or identity.
The avatar is the incarnation of poetic legitimacy once it asserts itself
in a literary network—even if it is a fiction. As Robinson or perhaps
Bell asserts in the “Dedication” to her 1791 Poems,

Mrs. ROBINSON has the particular gratification of knowing that the


efforts of her pen were warmly, and honourably patronized under
22 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

FEIGNED Signatures: had she avowed them at an earlier period the plea-
sure she now feels would have been considerably diminished, in the
idea that the partiality of friends had procured the sanction her Poems
have been favoured with from the candid and enlightened. . . . (iii)

Here, the pseudonyms have asserted the legitimacy of Robinson’s


poetic talents by protecting the poems from the “partiality of friends”
and from its opposite. Even though it is both posturing and market-
ing, this preface initiates a public performance in which Robinson, no
longer on stage, asserts a textual claim to fame that her poems will
have to fulfill. Her handsome volume, elegantly printed by Bell, is,
moreover, a material product of her successful networking. But this
success is contingent upon the game she has learned how to play. Her
avatars are not disguises—they are all testaments, artifacts of her lit-
erary and cultural authority. She continues to use a pseudonym even
after everyone knows it belongs to her. An avatar thus is all about
being that version of oneself: she can be Laura Maria or she can be
Oberon as a textual feature of the poetic instance. This is how she
manifests and proliferates herself through form.

Oberon as Robinson—Not Robinson


as Oberon
Were her avatars theatrical performances in print, Robinson sim-
ply could have picked a character, say, from Shakespeare and writ-
ten poetry as that character. Swift and Franklin, for instance, had
constructed coherent characters for periodical publication. But her
pseudonyms are far more complicated than that, as her Oberon ava-
tar demonstrates. Oberon provides a useful case study. She used
it early in her career for her contributions to Bell’s newspaper the
Oracle and revived it years later when she worked for Stuart at the
Morning Post during the final year of her life. The signature is
interesting because it is a male persona and thus recalls Robinson’s
stint as an actress known for playing “breeches” parts. And, obvi-
ously, the name ostensibly alludes to Shakespeare’s quasimalevolent
king of the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Stylistically,
the tetrameter couplets and quatrains that feature in Robinson’s
first Oberon poems recall the charming musicality of Ben Jonson’s
1611 masque Oberon, The Fairy Prince and the fairy songs therein;
likewise, Robinson’s Oberon poems also recall Robert Herrick’s
playfully erotic Oberon poems, “Oberon’s Feast” (sometimes
called “Oberon’s Palace”) and “The Fairy Temple; or, Oberon’s
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 23

Chapel,” both in octosyllabic couplets, which is the form of many of


Robinson’s Oberon poems.
Robinson’s first use of the Oberon avatar involves Merry, who by
this time was no longer using the Della Crusca avatar. Her “To the
Queen of the Fairies,” signed “Oberon,” appeared in the Oracle on
3 June 1790 and is part of a series of poems initiated by Merry writ-
ing as “Il Ferito,” which is Italian for “the injured man.” And this
exchange also involves Bell, who, in addition to publishing the news-
paper in which these poems appeared, would publish later that year
Merry’s Laurel of Liberty and Robinson’s Ainsi va le monde (to be
discussed in chapter two). Other cultural influences from newspaper
reports may be in play as well: Robinson may have seen or, more
likely, heard or read about Henry Fuseli’s Titania Awakening, which
the papers described as “Oberon”; even a prominent racehorse named
“Oberon” was covered in the papers—and certainly the Prince of
Wales and his circle were following such topics. But most likely the
pseudonym is an inside joke for Bell and others among Sheridan’s
Drury Lane crowd. Robinson’s pseudonym is a reference to Susannah
Cibber’s popular one-act comedy The Oracle, which premiered in
1753 on Drury Lane and enjoyed several revivals there and at Covent
Garden until the end of the century. Cibber’s play, adapted from a
French comedy by Germain-François de Saint-Foix, tells the story of
the young Oberon, son of the fairy queen, who falls in love with the
mortal Cinthia, thus fulfilling the prophecy of an oracle who foretold
the young fairy would marry a beautiful princess. A renowned actress
and singer, Cibber, also the daughter-in-law of Colley Cibber who
managed Drury Lane before David Garrick did, was for two decades
Garrick’s leading lady and became the highest paid actress at Drury
Lane until her death in 1766. So, referring to the Oberon of Cibber’s
comedy, Robinson’s pseudonym makes a kind of pun on the name
of the newspaper in which it exclusively appeared (until many years
later). Moreover, as is typical of Robinson, the reference to Cibber is
particularly self-reflexive: Cibber had been, like Robinson, Garrick’s
protégée, and Robinson recalled in her Memoirs that Garrick used to
praise her by comparing her to “his favourite Cibber” (7: 207). Even
more than this, Cibber also was the most famous actress to play the
role of Perdita in Garrick’s adaptation of The Winter’s Tale prior to
Robinson’s fateful portrayal of the part.
Again, Robinson is not playing a character that presumably has
a particular—or characteristic—subjectivity. She is presenting an
alternate version of herself. Robinson, therefore, is not playing
the role of Oberon as if it were a character. The avatar performs a
24 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

multiplicity of allusions, characters, texts, contexts, intertexts, and


modes. Robinson’s use of this avatar is arresting and complicated,
for at first she plays on the character’s role in Shakespeare’s comedy
as an agent of erotic deception: Two years later, in a twist presum-
ably on the dispute between Oberon and Titania over the changeling
boy, Robinson employs the avatar for a series of poems on maternal
themes. The initial poem, Il Ferito’s “Subjection,” appeared in the
Oracle on 29 May 1790, inspiring a response from the “Queen of
the Fairies,” which Bell printed on 2 June. The papers for these days,
however, are not known to exist. Robinson’s poem “To the Queen
of the Fairies” appeared the very next day, 3 June; this day’s paper
fortunately has been preserved. Another poem “To Il Ferito,” signed
by “Philo-Poesis” (“Poetry-lover”), appeared the same day in the
same column and identifies Il Ferito as Della Crusca—not as Robert
Merry. This poem appears with a footnote quoting Il Ferito’s origi-
nal poem: “I’ll quit for e’er this fatal Shore.” One avatar is used to
identify another. Robinson does the same thing when she includes
the poem in her 1791 Poems, providing a footnote for “Il Ferito” that
reads simply “Della Crusca.” Aside from the title, Philo-Poesis’s poem
drops all pretense and directly addresses Della Crusca. Robinson’s
Oberon avatar debuts in this context. Although we do not have the
poem to which she responds, the reprinting of her poem in the 1791
volume provides as an epigraph a ten-line excerpt from “Queen of
the Fairies to Il Ferito,” which indicates that the poem is essentially
a request from Mab/Titania that Oberon magically intervene on Il
Ferito’s behalf. Robinson’s poem is his response—“Sweet Mab—at
thy command I flew” (1: 75; 1). The poem is unabashedly sexual,
as Robinson’s Oberon describes finding Maria asleep, with suitably
white breast and blushing cheek; he enhances her already erotic dream
of Il Ferito with specific characteristics:

The blissful moment swift I caught,


And to the Maiden’s slumb’ring thought
Pictur’d the graces of his mind,
His Taste, his Eloquence refin’d;
His polish’d Manners sweetly mild,
His soft poetic warblings wild:
His warm empassion’d Verse, that fills
The Soul with Love’s ecstatic thrills.
I mark’d the blush upon her cheek
Her spotless bosom’s language speak;
I mark’d the tear of pity roll,
Sweet emblem of her feeling Soul.
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 25

I heard the sympathetic Sigh


Upon her lip’s vermilion die [sic]. (1: 76; 37–50)

This passage employs the tropes of Sensibility—particularly the ubiq-


uitous “tear of pity” —but ultimately to serve a ludic and erotic end.
The “sympathetic Sigh” that Oberon’s magic accomplishes here is
the emblem not of the sentimental recognition of a common human-
ity but of her now reciprocated sexual desire for Il Ferito / Della
Crusca. The poem comically concludes when a “too eager” Cupid
approaches “the Maiden’s bed” and wakes her; Oberon’s mission is
accomplished as the poem, his “rapt’rous Tale,” eagerly reports “To Il
Ferito’s grateful Ear” (1: 77; 51–58). Here, Robinson’s Oberon seems
to perform a role similar to that of Shakespeare’s character, using his
magic to influence the romantic entanglements of young lovers; and
she does it with gusto.
This is the only Oberon poem to appear in her 1791 volume,
which gathers her poetry from the World and the Oracle. The vol-
ume’s preface unmasks Laura, Laura Maria, and Oberon as the
“feigned signatures” of “Mrs. M. Robinson.” This specific avowal
of only one poem draws particular attention to Robinson’s iden-
tity as “Oberon.” Perhaps the author of “Queen of the Fairies to Il
Ferito” beat her to the Mab/Titania character, or perhaps Robinson
enjoyed dabbling in the heteroerotic mischief the Oberon character
affords. As I suggested above, however, her subsequent use of the
Oberon avatar, before temporarily retiring it, greatly complicates
this interpretation of the character. After the publication of the
1791 volume—and the revelation of Oberon as one of Robinson’s
avatars—she employed it again for a series of poems on maternal
themes. The first, simply titled “Invocation,” appeared with the
“Oberon” signature in the Oracle on 15 March 1792. Here, Oberon
responds to “a plaintive voice,” but this time he is called upon to
heal a sick girl also named Maria, thus recalling Il Ferito’s loved
one (1: 170; 9). Oberon promises, “Fair Maria’s fev’rish lip, / Shall
Hygeia’s balsam sip” (1: 171; 47–8). The poem concludes with the
assurance that

Still, where’er the Damsel strays,


Thro’ dull life’s perplexing maze,
Watchful OBERON shall be,
GUARDIAN OF HER DESTINY. (59–62)

This poem presents a different, more protective and fatherly Oberon


and a different Maria. No other reference is made to the previous
26 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poem. On 17 March 1792, the Oracle printed an unsigned response,


“Oberon and Titania,” written by playwright James Boaden, who also
worked on the paper. This response is a playful dialogue in which the
fairy queen jealously interprets Robinson’s poem, signed “Oberon,”
as a seduction poem; a minor quarrel ensues, and the poem con-
cludes with Oberon’s assurance that Titania need not doubt his fidel-
ity and that he was merely soothing “a mother’s fears.”3 Later, on 27
March, Robinson prints “Oberon to Maria on Seeing Her Gather
Some Pensees,” which might seem to run the risk of rekindling
Titania’s jealousy (1: 171–2). When Robinson republished these two
poems in her 1794 Poems, they are transformed into poems about
her daughter recovering from a distressing illness; the first poem is
re-titled as “Invocation, Written on the Recovery of My Daughter
from Inoculation, and First Published with the Signature of Oberon”
and the second as “Stanzas to My Beloved Daughter, On Seeing Her
Gather Some Pensées.” The former is greatly expanded but not in such
a way as to emphasize the reading established by the new title and dif-
ferent context. The latter poem, which remains largely unchanged,
also presents a fatherly Oberon who admonishes the girl for picking
and thus killing the flowers and teaches the lesson, “Take not what
bounteous NATURE gave / But learn to cherish—and to save” (1: 172;
22–3). This Oberon bears no relation to Shakespeare’s Oberon or to
Robinson’s previous poems; instead, he seems to be a more generally
mythical figure, as the gathering of flowers, in English folklore, is
associated with fairies.
But why would Robinson write poems for her daughter as Oberon?
In the Memoirs, Robinson’s poetic composition is associated with her
efforts “to cheer and amuse” her daughter, Maria Elizabeth, during
an illness (7: 276). The Oberon avatar for these poems is particularly
curious, especially given the dispute in Shakespeare’s play between
Oberon and Titania over the changeling boy whose mother left under
Titania’s care. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon intends to dis-
rupt Titania’s maternal role by taking the boy from her to be one of his
henchmen. These poems would seem to radically revise the character of
Oberon. Robinson’s Oberon, as it turns out, is just as much influenced
by Frances Greville’s “A Prayer for Indifference,” sometimes printed
as “Ode to Indifference,” as by Shakespeare’s character. Greville’s
poem, memorably examined by Jerome McGann in The Poetics of
Sensibility, is indeed a key text in that tradition, inspiring responses by
both Hannah More and Helen Maria Williams.4 In Greville’s poem,
the speaker invokes Oberon in the hope that he may provide some
opiate, “the sovereign balm” or the “nymph Indifference bring,” as
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 27

an antidote to her painful sensibility. This portrayal of Oberon likely


influenced the original Il Ferito exchange. Although Greville alludes
to Oberon’s mischief in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she sees him
as a fantastic apothecary of sorts, taking pity on mortals’ wounds; the
“prayer” ends, renouncing the pain of love in favor of “sober ease”
and being content in being “half-pleas’d.” The speaker asks of Oberon
a kind of numb asceticism presumably, through further literary infer-
ence, to avoid the erotic agitation associated with his queen, Mab, in
Mercutio’s speech from Romeo and Juliet. Still, it is difficult to recog-
nize Oberon as a protector without reading Greville’s portrayal as an
additional layer of intertextuality.
On a more personal level, these poems figuratively provide
Robinson’s daughter with a paternal figure that allegorizes the actual
fact of Robinson’s having to raise Maria Elizabeth without the assis-
tance of the girl’s father, Thomas Robinson. In the case of these two
poems, the avatar may serve as a way for Robinson to overwrite her
daughter’s real father with a fantastic poetic version of herself; this
overwriting also revises the antimaternal aspect of Shakespeare’s
character, who, in the play, ends up taking the boy and inexplica-
bly reconciling with his formerly defiant queen, whom Oberon has
humiliated and humbled by having her sleep with Bottom.
The next time Robinson writes as Oberon, she addresses her fellow
poet Charlotte Smith. The last Oberon poem for nearly seven years
appeared in the Oracle on 17 September 1793 as “Sonnet to Mrs.
Charlotte Smith, on Hearing that Her Son Was Wounded at the Siege
of Dunkirk.” Significantly, this is the only poem in which Robinson
pays tribute to a contemporary female poet, but here the emphasis is on
Smith as a mother rather than as a fellow poet. As a woman, mother,
and hardworking professional writer, Robinson suggests a kinship with
Smith, whose son Charles lost his leg in combat while serving under the
Duke of York at the Siege of Dunkirk; Smith’s children, like Robinson’s,
were similarly fatherless, if not literally so. Certainly, Robinson’s choice
of form pays tribute to Smith, who was widely recognized as the poet
responsible for reviving the sonnet with the publication of her Elegiac
Sonnets in 1784. But the poem focuses on the presumed maternal anxi-
ety as Robinson promises comfort for Smith in poetic composition:

Yet HOPE for THEE shall bend her soothing wings,


Steal to thy breast, and check the rising tear,
As to thy polish’d mind rapt Fancy brings
The G ALLANT BOY, to BRITAIN’S GENIUS dear!
And, while for HIM a LAUREL’D Couch SHE strews,
28 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Fair TRUTH shall snatch a Wreath, TO DECK HIS PARENT MUSE !


(1: 210–1; 8–14)

Perhaps out of a sense of delicacy and respect, Robinson avoids flat-


tering Smith but instead acknowledges her son’s service and sacri-
fice, and suggests that Smith will receive the gratification not of a
poet but of a parent, earning not a poetic laurel but a maternal one.
This poem is complicated by the possibility of a rivalry between the
two poets, whose literary careers run parallel in many respects and
by the reality of Robinson’s infamous nonliterary career as Perdita.
Because of Robinson’s reputation, Smith wanted to avoid any asso-
ciation between her work and Robinson’s, and Robinson may have
sensed that Smith may not have accepted as a compliment a tributary
poem signed by her.5 So, the paternal Oberon avatar serves as a partial
effacement of the unsavory aspects of Robinson’s past. Robinson’s
poem, for example, prompted a response: “Sonnet to Oberon,
Occasioned by a Sonnet to Mrs. Charlotte Smith, in the Oracle of
the 17th September” by “Themira” appeared in the Oracle for 20
September 1793, reminding readers the previous Oberon poems—
particularly “Invocation”—are poems that “could sooth a weeping
Mother’s woe.” But, by this time, Robinson already had claimed the
Oberon avatar in all of its complexity and with all of the associations
it entailed.
Robinson does not use the Oberon avatar again until it appears
nearly seven years later in the Oracle, now owned by Peter Stuart, who
purchased it from Bell and called it the Oracle and Daily Advertiser.
On 4 April 1799, Robinson gave the signature to her “Stanzas on
the Duchess of Devonshire,” which again recalls Cibber’s comedy for
a similar play on the pseudonym and the lovesick hero of The Oracle.
Here, the avatar pays court to Robinson’s own patroness, Georgiana,
but the guise of a male admirer allows Robinson to add a touch of
erotic infatuation (2: 1). Almost a year later, Robinson revives the
avatar for her work at the Morning Post during the final year of her
life, at which point it loses its punning association. As Pascoe points
out, Oberon becomes an identity for “lavish[ing] praises on women”
(Romantic 174). In particular, she does so on female celebrities whose
experience of publicity, good and bad, may accord in some respects
with Robinson’s. Oberon praises them in several poems published
in the Morning Post during the final year of Robinson’s life, includ-
ing an ode to the actress Dora Bland whose stage name was “Mrs.
Jordan” (2: 55–66), a lyric celebrating the beauty of Georgiana
and her aristocratic cohort (“Stanzas Written in Hyde-Park on
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 29

Sunday Last” [2: 57–8]), another lyric marveling at the spectacle of


Georgiana in her “new and splendid carriage” (2: 58–9), and a poem
on catching a glimpse of the Countess of Yarmouth “at her window
in Piccadilly” (2: 67–8). These poems, replete with the frisson of
fleeting glimpses of fashionable female celebrity, gently lampoon the
chivalric hyperbole of male erotic spectatorship and hyper-sensibility,
if not the spectacles themselves. Robinson treads lightly here, for she
was known to be the author of the Oberon poems and did not want
to risk alienating those whom she hoped would subscribe to a third
volume of her collected poems, which never materialized despite
being puffed aggressively in the Post. For instance, her “Stanzas on
the Duchess of Devonshire’s Indisposition” conveys no irony in its
sympathetic concern and its praise of Georgiana’s virtue and mag-
nanimity (2: 75). But Robinson also revives the paternal/maternal
facet of the avatar for “Lines Addressed to a Beautiful Infant,” which
she inscribed to Eliza Fenwick, author of the novel Secresy (1795),
who with her young children stayed with Robinson for a few weeks
in the summer of 1800 when Fenwick separated from her husband
(2: 108–9).
But the Oberon avatar resists characterization as erotic or pater-
nal, and the Oberon poems defy classification as having any qualities
peculiar to a coherent fiction of Oberon’s personality or authority.
Oberon is like any other poet-figure in that he writes in a variety of
styles from a variety of perspectives. In this way, Oberon, like each
of her avatars, is a metonym for Robinson. She used the signature for
several other poems during the final months of her life, from May
until October of 1800, and these final Oberon poems run the gambit
of her lyric modes. Playing on Burns’s “To a Mouse,” “Oberon, to
the May Fly” is a charming rumination on the transience of human
life, but with a comic bathos in the image of a tiny fairy and fly
replacing the laborer and the mouse (2: 84–5). “The Fisherman” is
mildly subversive in its celebration of working-class contentedness
(2: 106–7). In “A Hue and Cry,” Oberon complains of the wan-
ton immodesty displayed by revelers at Brighton—undoubtedly a
dig at the Prince of Wales’ supposed dissipation following his separa-
tion from Caroline of Brunswick (2: 118). Oberon is amorous (“To
Arabelle!” [2: 128–9]), comical (“Sweet Madeline of Aberdeen” [2:
131–2]), pathetic (“Written on the Sea-Shore” [2: 133–4]), didactic
(“Love’s Four Senses” [2: 142–3]), and sentimental (“Written Near
an Old Oak” [2: 143–4]). And in a pair of poems signed “M. R.,”
“Oberon to Titania” and “Titania’s Answer to Oberon,” Robinson
figuratively returns the characters to Shakespeare (2: 119–21).
30 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

The most remarkable of Robinson’s Oberon poems is “The


Camp,” which Paula Feldman describes as “a poetic tour de force”
(British 594). Like her earlier poem “January 1795,” published with
Robinson’s Portia avatar (see chapter four), “The Camp” is in tro-
chaic tetrameter, which is best known as the meter Shakespeare uses
for the witches in Macbeth, to which Robinson alludes by echoing
the phrase “hurly burly” in line 32 (2: 111–2). Robinson’s metri-
cal choice, moreover, greatly the enhances the satirical montage of
sights and sounds of an assembly of soldiers and an attendant entou-
rage where the fashionable and the military, the opulent and the vul-
gar, and, most of all, the sexual, the belligerent, and the commercial
become jarringly confused. As Pascoe notes, Robinson probably wit-
nessed much of this firsthand at Windsor Camp, where, as the Post
reported on 5 August 1800, a large party took place the week before
(Romantic 156). Robinson’s Oberon poem, however, appeared in the
Morning Post more immediately on 1 August 1800. The poem’s form
extends its meaning through accretion, but here is how it opens:

TENTS, marquees, and baggage waggons;


Suttling houses; beer in flaggons;
Drums and trumpets, singing, firing;
Girls seducing, beaux admiring;
Country lasses gay and smiling
City lads their hearts beguiling;
Dusty roads, and horses frisky;
Many an Eton boy in whisky;
Tax’d carts full of farmers’ daughters;
Brutes condemn’d, and man—who slaughters!—
Public-houses, booths, and castles;
Belles of fashion, serving vassals;
Lordly Gen’rals fiercely staring,
Weary soldiers, sighing, swearing! (2: 111; 1–14)

Robinson uses the binary symmetry of the couplets and the syncopa-
tion of varying caesurae to sonic and semantic effect. The power of
the poem is that the irony, one suspects, is ironic in itself because
its satirical method shifts imperceptibly from objective description to
sarcastic juxtaposition and back again. Moreover, the poem’s inevi-
table rhythmic echo of “Double, double, toil and trouble” gives it
pleasingly disorienting oscillation between playfulness and dread. As
it builds to its conclusion—where Oberon finally observes, “All con-
fusion, din, and riot— / NOTHING CLEAN— AND NOTHING QUIET.”—
the fairy signature attached at the end merges strangely but effectively
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 31

with the sound of the witches’ incantation. Because of its formal effi-
ciency and satirical clarity, this has become one of Robinson’s most
admired poems since Curran first drew attention to it in “The I
Altered” (191–2). As Jeffrey C. Robinson suggests, “the laying out
of sights and sounds changes confusion into relationships, a swirl of
detail becomes a constellation” (97). One of her best poems, “The
Camp,” unlike most of Robinson’s poems, did not become part of her
canon represented by the 1806 Poetical Works, which was edited by
her daughter, Maria Elizabeth. But it did reappear with a few substan-
tive changes as “Winkfield Plain; or a Description of a Camp in the
Year 1800” in Maria Elizabeth Robinson’s 1804 anthology The Wild
Wreath, published in tribute to her mother.6 There, it appears signed
not by Oberon but with the initials “M. E. R.” Perhaps a misprint.
However, given the likelihood that the poem’s descriptions could eas-
ily recall the Prince of Wales’ corps at Brighton and thus Robinson’s
past association with him, Maria Elizabeth may have given her own
initials to the poem in an effort to distance her mother from that
unsavory past rather than to claim it as her own work. But then why
reprint the poem at all? Whatever the reason, Robinson’s pseudonym
would not do. As an avatar, Oberon fails as effacement of Robinson’s
authorship even despite the fact that the signature represents a mythi-
cal king of the fairies. Robinson thus does not play Oberon; rather,
Oberon represents Robinson.7
During her tenure as Stuart’s chief poetic correspondent, Robinson
revived nearly all of her avatars, most of which I will discuss in the
course of this study. They are all fluid, shifting, finally indeterminate
as representations of anything other than Robinson’s fertile, fervid
poetic ingenuity. This is why I think of them in terms of form rather
than character or persona. In the tributary poems that appear in the
1801 Memoirs and the 1806 Poetical Works, Robinson’s poetic admir-
ers use the avatars interchangeably as allegories for Robinson’s poetic
genius. On a more mundane level, for professional purposes, the
pseudonyms gave the impression of variety—especially in the final
year of her life—and provided her employers with the appearance of
a healthy stable of writers. As the chief contributor of poetry to the
Morning Post, Robinson seems to have thought of her position as
requiring at least the fiction of a vast array of poetic contributors.
As she writes to her friend Pratt, “I continue my daily labours / in
the Post; all the Oberons, Tabithas, MR’s and indeed all most of the
poetry, you see there is mine” (7: 321). This is the way she took
charge of the paper’s poetical department, a subject I will address
in greater depth in chapter four. The principals among Robinson’s
32 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

gallery of avatars are Laura, Laura Maria, Oberon, Portia, Tabitha


Bramble, and Sappho, although I would include “M. R.” and “Mrs.
Robinson” as having discernible valances among this group of signs.
But the minor avatars, too, have peculiar significations and resonance
attached incidentally to certain poems. “Humanitas,” for instance,
has a specific political determinacy evinced by its Latin etymology
(see page 168); “Lesbia” is a counterpart to Robinson’s own Sappho
avatar but with deliberate heteroerotic overtones. Robinson signed a
couple of poems in April of 1800 as “Bridget,” which may refer to a
character in her own poem “The Confessor—A Sanctified Tale” or
to the shrewish wife of Franklin’s Poor Richard. And Robinson used
her Julia avatar primarily for lightly erotic poetry during the early
1790s, including her popular lyric “Stanzas, Written between Dover
and Calais, July 24th, 1792” (1: 180–1), which in truth arose from a
bitter separation from Tarleton but which, in the context of a news-
paper exchange in the Oracle, would have appeared to result from
Julia’s affair with a certain “Carlos.”8 But Julia was also an attempt
at partial self-effacement, too, such as with the fawning “Sonnet, To
the Prince of Wales,” which Robinson signed “Julia” before she was
known to be the poet behind the pseudonym (1: 184). But there
is likely some irony in this as well, since, as Robinson would have
known, Julia is the granddaughter of Augustus and, according to the
lore, the supposed lover of Ovid. Augustus banished both Julia and
Ovid in the same year—a feeling Robinson knew well, having been
banished figuratively by her lover’s father, King George III.

The Della Crusca Network


When Mary Robinson returned from her self-imposed continental
exile at the beginning of 1788, the poetry of the World was all the
rage. The sensational poetic exchange between Della Crusca and Anna
Matilda, carried on in the columns of this innovative newspaper, was
at the height of its popularity, with readers speculating feverishly on
the identities of the two rhapsodic poets. Later, in July, an attractive
two-volume anthology of poems collected from the World appeared
from the press of John Bell. Edited by Bell’s colorful partner, Captain
Edward Topham, this anthology gave Robinson a context in which to
begin her career as a professional writer, particularly as it established
the kind of poet she was going to be. Robinson’s continental sojourn
had been partly for convalescence and partly to escape her creditors
and the infamy of the gossip pages. Now, back in England, she had to
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 33

care for a sickly teenage daughter and an elderly mother. Moreover,


she was partially incapacitated by a mysterious illness she suffered in
1783. She was therefore in need of a profession. The Memoirs (1801)
presents this return as momentous, as “the commencement of her
literary career”: “On her arrival in London, she was affectionately
received by the few friends whose attachment neither detraction nor
adverse fortunes could weaken or estrange” (7: 275). Robinson found
herself “surrounded by social and rational friends,” among them,
she notes, the Prince and his brother, the Duke of York (7: 275).
Robinson, furthermore, remained on friendly terms with Fox, who
also was a friend of Tarleton, and with Sheridan, who had an uneasy
political relationship with Fox. The Memoirs additionally describe the
impromptu composition of “Lines to Him Who Will Understand
Them” in the company of Richard Burke, son of Edmund Burke (7:
276). Robinson thus returned to a heady social network of eminent
Whigs who welcomed her home. Was Topham or Bell among them?
Is it possible someone presented Robinson with Bell’s lovely volumes,
The Poetry of the World? Preoccupied as her poetry would be with
fame, Robinson surely could not have resisted the final page’s guar-
antee “to transmit to Posterity all the POETRY which shall hereafter
appear in the WORLD” and its implied invitation: “Correspondents,
of talents, therefore, will have the gratification of finding their favors
elegantly and respectably preserved” (2: 144). In addition to the like-
lihood that either Topham or Bell directly solicited her correspon-
dence, she would have found irresistible the idea that her poetry could
be “elegantly and respectably preserved” after having endured the
indignity of the “Perdita” epithet and its humiliating associations.
Robinson was willing to work for her poetic immortality as a profes-
sional writer, even if she had to start by earning pennies by contribut-
ing newspaper verse.
Robinson’s return to England was also her return to publicity. Just
ten days before the publication of The Poetry of the World that same
paper reported, on 4 June, that “Mrs. Robinson has left Aix, and
Spa; and means to continue in London.” Although she had been in
England since the beginning of the year, this particular item suggests
that Topham and his editor, the Reverend Charles Este, were taking
note of her movements and possibly that they were socializing with
her; a news item, or puff, such as this suggests that they were solic-
iting her to contribute. Insipid as this item is, it was the first press
report on Robinson in several years that did not portray Robinson as
an exemplar of female depravity and that did not exult in reporting
34 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

her well-deserved fall from fashionable celebrity into penury and


debility. Around the time of her return to London, on 14 January
1788, the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser reported that “Mrs.
Robinson, the celebrated Perdita, has published, in France, several
pieces of Poetry, which have been well received.” For most of the rest
of her life, public remarks on Robinson’s celebrity always are suf-
fused with irony, encoded with ignominy; Robinson could not escape
entirely being associated with the avatar of her celebrity, Perdita the
“Cyprian devotee.” 9 As a poet, however, she sought to diminish the
potency of such repeated attempts to humiliate her by demonstrating
her poetic powers.
Robinson was eager to exchange identities. The most important
choice of Robinson’s literary career is her participation in the net-
work around Bell. When Robinson returned to London, the success
of this network already had been established with the popularity
of Della Crusca’s poetry. I call this network, therefore, the Della
Crusca network because Merry’s pseudonym was its public avatar.
The Della Crusca network afforded Robinson a crucial opportunity
for exchanging her celebrity for poetic fame. In October, inspired by
the success of Bell’s anthology, Robinson published her poem “Lines
Dedicated to the Memory of a Much-Lamented Young Gentleman,”
her first publication in over a decade. Writing as “Laura,” with delib-
erate Petrarchan resonance, Robinson thus made her first serious
foray onto the literary scene and began to re-appropriate versions of
her public self, displacing her past as actress and courtesan, while
also envisioning other possible contexts for her poetic identity. Merry
provided her a model for doing so: after a few years abroad, he had
repatriated himself in the newspaper as Della Crusca and had become
famous. Merry’s success as Della Crusca showed her how to parlay
form into fame—not just poetic form, but the shape-shifting made
possible by the deployment of avatars.
Robinson’s poetic networking with Della Crusca is participation in
a conversation and a game that takes place in a very specific medium.
As popular culture, the poetry of the World only facetiously pretends
to be great literature. What is exceptional about the poetry associated
with the World and Della Crusca is that it became a sensation, and
the actors involved in the network were all keen to capitalize on that
sensation. Like any form of pop culture, it was subject to criticism and
complaint, but such cavils are forms of misreading. I propose instead
that the Della Cruscans were not a coterie of pretentious poets, as
many contemporary detractors thought them, or a serious literary
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 35

movement, as those critics deplored it as being. Even though Topham


glibly dubbed the group “the Della Crusca school” in the World, I
see it more accurately as a ludic network of writers, signatures, texts,
intertexts, and media (21 November 1788). The original coterie of
English expatriates residing in Florence consisted of Robert Merry,
Hester Piozzi, Bertie Greatheed, and William Parsons; they wrote
poems to one another for fun and collected them together as The
Florence Miscellany, published in 1785.10 However, the specific group
in London who, just a few years later, came to be known as Della
Cruscans were those poets associated with the World and later the
Oracle, those who wrote the poetry later reviled as “Della Cruscan,”
and those such as Bell and Topham who published it. These poets
include Merry, Cowley, Robinson, Miles Peter Andrews, Edward
Jerningham, Thomas Vaughan, his daughter (a “Miss Vaughan”),
George Monck Berkeley, William Kendall, Tom Adney, James Boaden,
as well as countless others who remain unidentified. But Merry as
Della Crusca, Cowley as Anna Matilda, and Robinson as Laura and
as Laura Maria are the most prolific and are the participants the pub-
lic best recognized. They—or rather, their avatars—were the nodes
around which the rest of the network coalesced, the public “faces” of
the sensation.
The Della Crusca network began a few months after the creation
of the World. The first number of the paper, 1 January 1787, sold
3,000 copies with an additional 1,000 printed to meet demand
(Morison, John Bell 8). Within its first few months of publication the
World had become hugely successful, affecting the sales of all of the
other London papers (Werkmeister, London 158). Its political opin-
ions were directed by playwright-cum-MP Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
who wrote some of the political coverage, and possibly by the ambi-
tious yet aimless Prince of Wales, who was at the time flirting with
Whig politics. Topham conducted the paper with the help of his assis-
tant and mistress Mary Wells, the Reverend Charles Este, and the
playwright (and gunpowder merchant) Miles Peter Andrews, whom
Robinson may also have known from her days in the theatre. Bell’s
involvement was limited to the printing of the paper, and his relation-
ship with Topham appears to have been rocky from the start. Well
aware of Robinson’s well-publicized past, the gossip-loving Topham
printed news of her return the previous summer with the intention
of raising eyebrows among the World’s knowing readership, for she
had been the lover both of the Prince and of Fox. Because of these
personal associations and because the paper was itself a sensation,
36 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the World also would have been Robinson’s preferred source for the
latest news—political, fashionable, and literary—upon her return to
England. There she would have read numerous reports on the King’s
health, the Prince’s cavorting, and the political maneuvering of Fox
and Sheridan, who were opponents but who nonetheless shared a
common foe, Prime Minister William Pitt (about which more follows
in the next chapter). In July of 1788 all of this would have galvanized
Robinson, who had deployed her celebrity to canvass for Fox in April
of 1784. So, for those possessing a longer memory than gossip usually
affords, what drama there may have been in Robinson’s return was
set against a backdrop of royal lunacy and the impending aggrandize-
ment of her former lovers.
Publishing with Bell certainly was an appealing prospect.
Exploiting changes in the copyright laws, Bell began his career as
a highly successful maverick publisher with his multi-volume collec-
tions of Shakespeare (1774), British Theatre (1774–6), and, most
significant, his 109 volumes of Poets of Great Britain from Chaucer
to Churchill (1777–82), which prompted the rival series the Works
of the English Poets featuring Samuel Johnson’s famous prefaces and
that established, in Michael Gamer’s words, the “ ‘Bell’ brand name”
(46–7). By publishing, as Bell himself put it, “the most beautiful,
the correctest, the cheapest, and the only complete uniform edition
of the British Poets,” Bell played no small part in establishing the
literary canon as we have it today, with these volumes reaching and
influencing an inestimable number of readers and writers.11 Bell’s sig-
nificant printing innovations set new standards for readability and
general elegance; this, coupled with his attention to the pulse of pub-
lic, popular taste, made the World a significant venue for poets in the
marketplace. On top of this, from 1780 he was proprietor of the sub-
scription library called “the British Library”; in 1788, he purchased
the right to brand himself “Bookseller to the Prince of Wales” on the
title pages of his publications (Morison, John Bell 6–7, 9). As Morison
elsewhere points out, Bell found himself at the center of a fashionable
network: his library became “the resort of men of fashion” and “was
elegantly furnished within”; Bell made it a site of hypermasculinity
with “a nude Apollo mounted over the facia [that] advertised the
British as no ordinary Library” (Morison, “Captain Epilogue” 4–5).
Bell, who despite his success remains a rather shadowy figure, estab-
lished an atmosphere of ludic eroticism in which poetry and sexuality
were linked. Bell’s naked Apollo was at worst incongruously bawdy
and pretentious, but it was an easy target for his competitors and
became an emblem signifying bad taste and a lack of decorum both
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 37

commercially and poetically. The Times for 1 January 1789 suggested


that Bell’s indecent Apollo might be a marker for his literary tastes
and publishing ventures:

In ancient times when modesty prevailed


The female eye was not by vice assail’d:
A thought improper soon received a check,
Nor did indecent words our phrases deck.
The scene’s now changed – immodesty’s caress’d,
And that which shews least shame, is liked the best.
E’en MUSIC’S G OD stark naked’s made to stand
And brave all modest females in the Strand.
May some kind artist, who no vice bewitches,
Give J. Bell’s Pol a decent pair of breeches.

The poem appears with the opening lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses


as an epigraph: “In nova fert animus, mutatas dicere formas corpora”
(“I am inspired to tell of bodies changed into different forms”);
the transformation Bell’s icon represents, the poem suggests, is the
rise of lascivious commercialism. I would suggest that this early cri-
tique of Bell—two years before William Gifford’s attack on him in
the Baviad—may also serve as a commentary on the poetry he and
Topham published in the World and on why it was popular. Bell
would have known the adage well enough—sex sells. The poetry of
the Della Crusca network thus was playfully erotic.
As he did with his other publications, Bell marketed The Poetry of
the World heavily on the front page of the paper while Topham puffed
it extensively in its columns. In particular, the two partners were keen
to capitalize on the popularity of the erotic poetic exchange between
Della Crusca and Anna Matilda, the pseudonyms, respectively, of
Robert Merry and Hannah Cowley. Their fictional love affair had
begun the previous summer and was serially enacted in the pages
of the daily paper over several months, boosting sales of the fledg-
ing broadsheet sufficiently to warrant publication in book from. The
operatic vicissitudes of these star-crossed lovers was expressed in an
exaggerated version of the language of Sensibility; it was just indeco-
rous enough to be titillating. In 1788, Bell published not only the two
volumes of The Poetry of the World but also a separate volume of the
Poetry of Anna Matilda, which reprinted yet again the Della Crusca-
Anna Matilda exchange, and Della Crusca’s long poem Diversity. For
Bell, this poetical correspondence became a commercially successful
venture in a new form of popular culture. Dodsley’s New Annual
38 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Register for that year praises the two titles for having “afforded us
much pleasure and entertainment”: these “plaintive, philosophical,
and humorous poems,” the review continues, “are distinguished by
lofty imagery, and poetical enthusiasm” and “by a beautiful ease and
simplicity” (261). Such a favorable assessment of this poetry in early
1789 stands in stark contrast to the ferocity of The Baviad, William
Gifford’s satirical evisceration of Della Crusca, Bell, and the other
poets associated with them two years later.
At the beginning of the Della Crusca-Anna Matilda phenomenon,
the Bell–Topham nexus was central to this network because it pro-
vided the media: this nexus selected and printed the poems in the
newspaper, collected and published them in a book, with Bell ulti-
mately offering solo book deals to those writers—Merry, Cowley, and
Robinson—who proved to be the most popular. Bell would also pub-
lish Merry’s political poems, which appeared under Merry’s name,
The Laurel of Liberty (1790) and Ode for the Fourteenth of July, 1791,
a Day Consecrated to Freedom (1791). So, clearly, from a professional
point of view, Robinson’s publishing with Bell during 1788–92 is
networking in today’s sense; that is, for Robinson, it was a means of
doing business with a coveted publisher, Bell, who would go on to
publish her poetry in the World, in the Oracle, and in four editions
of his next anthology of Della Cruscan verse, The British Album. Bell
also would publish the first four books of poetry she would produce
as a professional writer—Ainsi va le Monde in 1790, her first volume
of Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson in 1791, her Monody to the Memory of Sir
Joshua Reynolds in 1792 and Ode to the Harp of the Late Accomplished
and Amiable Louisa Hanway in 1793—as well as her first novel, the
best-selling Vancenza; or the Dangers of Credulity in 1792.
Although she made little money from these books (Bell him-
self would go bankrupt in 1793), these publications rehabilitated
Robinson’s image to such a great extent that, reviewing her 1791
volume, Ralph Giffiths’ Monthly Review hailed Robinson as “the
English Sappho,” ostensibly in tribute to her poetical talents:

The fair writer of these poems has been, for some time past, known
to the literary world under the assumed names of Laura, Laura
Maria, and Oberon. . . . [I]f people of taste and judgment were
impressed with a favourable idea of the poetess . . . they will deem
yet higher of our English Sappho, after the perusal of the present
volume; in which are some pieces, equal, perhaps, to the best pro-
ductions (so far as the knowledge of them is come down to us,) of
the Lesbian Dame, in point of tenderness, feeling, poetic imagery,
warmth, elegance, and above all, delicacy of expression, in which our
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 39

ingenious countrywoman far excels all that we know of the works of


the Grecian Sappho. (448)

Most often reiterated in print by her friends, this valuable sobriquet


nonetheless became cultural currency for the rest of the decade,
although some repeated it more or less obliquely in reference to
her adulterous past. As a lyric poet frequently writing about disap-
pointed love, Robinson could not avoid a mild suggestion of sexual-
ity, particularly because this volume reproduced as a frontispiece an
engraving made from one of Reynolds’ portraits of her. But Robinson
clearly employed her Della Cruscan avatars “Laura,” “Laura Maria,”
“Oberon,” and “Julia” as a means of effacing “the celebrated Perdita”
and of transforming “Mrs. Robinson” to “Sappho.” Through this
network Robinson gained access not only to a publisher, with whom
she could attempt to make money, but also entrée to a world of fellow
writers and readers who were already having fun with the poetry of
the World and its avatars.

The Man of Bran


Robinson’s poetry is fundamentally “Della Cruscan.” She herself used
that somewhat ludicrous adjective in her poem “Ode to the Muse,”
an expanded version of the poem “The Muse,” with which she initi-
ated herself into the network. Here, even the Muse herself sings to
a “DELLA CRUSCAN lyre” (1: 430). In his 1797 introduction to The
Baviad and Mæviad (xiii), Gifford rightly finds it to be ridiculous
but, not content to be simply amused, he goes on to attack the Della
Crusca network and its poets for not being serious literature. In this
regard, the figure Gifford attacks is a straw man; or, rather, a man of
bran. Merry, Topham, and others in the network knew very well that
his pseudonym “Della Crusca” was a centuries-old inside joke. In
fact, the original Accademia della Crusca had ostensibly ludic origins:
its name means literally “academy of bran,” deriving from a circle of
friends who playfully joked that they were a “brigata dei crusconi.”12
For the sixteenth-century Della Cruscans, the name was a bread-
making metaphor for their aim of purifying the Italian language and
of preserving the Florentine poetic diction of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio. The flour is good language, the bran is bad. Although they
were serious about their goal, as the publication of their Vocabolario
attests, the name is self-deprecating, even burlesque, enough. And
they used avatars as well in this social and cultural network, all of
which pertained to various aspects of the cultivation of grain and
40 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the making of bread (Yates 18). Merry knew this history. Moreover,
he never claimed to be a member of the Accademia della Crusca,
although his 1787 poem Paulina; or, The Russian Daughter, a Poem
identifies him by name on the title page as “Member of the Royal
Academy of Florence, late La Crusca.” This is accurate. Due to still-
lingering controversies regarding the fourth edition of the Accademia
della Crusca’s Vocabolario (1729–38) and to revolutionary activities
among Tuscan patriots, the Grand Duke Leopold (brother to Marie
Antoinette), later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, closed the acad-
emy or, rather, nominally merged it with two defunct institutions
to form the Accademia Fiorentina in 1783. While in Florence from
1782 to 1786, Merry associated with former members of the Cruscan
academy, who elected him to membership in the new Leopoldine
one.13 Just as the original Della Cruscans constituted a network so in
Florence Merry found himself in a new network closely affiliated with
the original one. Looking ahead to the network established by and
in the World, Merry knew very well that his signature literally means
“man of bran” and, by allusion to this well-established history, “bad
poet” or, in an ironical sense, “good poet.”
Back in London, in the columns of the World, the “Della Crusca”
pseudonym began as a joke between Topham and Merry. Most readers
today encounter the Della Crusca–Anna Matilda exchange as it was
repackaged in The Poetry of the World and The British Album. The orig-
inal newspaper publications, however, provide some additional nuances
that point to the playfulness of these poems and of this particular net-
work. Merry’s “The Adieu and Recall to Love,” which began the Della
Crusca phenomenon, actually appeared unsigned on 28 July 1787 in
the venerable General Evening Post. When it appeared in the World the
next day, Topham added the signature “Del Crusca” as an inside joke
perhaps, as Merry himself confirms in the Preface to his poem Diversity
(viii). The avatar was exclusive to the World at first, a kind of branding
of Merry’s verse. Topham prefaced the poem with the following note
“To the Conductor of the WORLD”—that is, to himself:

Sir,
The following Poem needs no recommendation but its own merit; and
I send it to you, because with you it will be most seen. The author of
it will occasionally appear in the World, though he will be unknown.
If Mrs. Piozzi, therefore, should ever remember to have seen what may
henceforward appear, let her conceal the name of the author, under
that of
DEL CRUSCA
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 41

Because the World for 29 June 1787 is rare—I found it at the Newberry
in Chicago—most readers follow the correspondence between Della
Crusca and Anna Matilda as it was reprinted in The Poetry of the
World and The British Album. Originally, however, the pseudonym
was “Del Crusca”; and Anna Matilda’s first poem to him, “The Pen,”
is addressed “to Del Crusca.” Part of the joke here is a reference to
Merry’s past affiliation and to his association with Hester Piozzi,
but I think it is also a sophomoric attempt to jokingly fashion a first
and last name out of the Accademia della Crusca. “Del” sounds thus
more masculine than “Della,” which is, of course, just a preposition
and article. Merry must have corrected Topham, though, because his
next poem to appear in the World (“Elegy, Written after Having Read
The Sorrows of Werter” on 26 July 1787) is signed “Della Crusca.”
Moreover, the reference to Piozzi certainly is a wink to those in the
know—which may not have been such an exclusive group because
poems from the Florence Miscellany, a 1785 anthology of poems by
Merry and his friends, had appeared already in the London press.
This little-known piece of paratextual evidence certainly casts new
light on the supposed mystery of Della Crusca’s identity.
These features of the poem’s original publication would have made
the poem even more intriguing. Merry’s debut, particularly in its
original context, is more playful than the subsequent attacks on the
Della Cruscans gave it credit for being. In their ludic-erotic qualities,
many of Della Crusca’s poems are similar to the tone and intertex-
tual strategies of Ovid’s Amores. As in many of Ovid’s poems, the
speaker’s ambivalence is comic, so the poem is simply organized to
demonstrate the vacillation from one pole, his rejection of love, to the
opposite, the futility of an inveterate cavalier making such an asser-
tion. The paradoxical effect is also, therefore, Petrarchan and thus
also echoes many an Elizabethan sonneteer. It begins, like Ovid’s
Amores, in mock admonishment of Cupid’s mischief: “Go, idle Boy!
I quit thy pow’r; / Thy couch of many a thorn and flow’r. . . . ” The
poem, moreover, contains the obligatory references to the nightin-
gale, “sweet bird of eve,” a ubiquitous epithet, and to the moon,
“pale-cheek’d Virgin of the Night,” all vestiges of Petrarchism com-
mon to the poetry of Sensibility and likely also references to Smith’s
Elegiac Sonnets, where similar figures appear.
Merry’s “The Adieu and Recall to Love” and Cowley’s response,
“The Pen,” are paired together as the opening of the romance in The
Poetry of the World and in the second collection The British Album
(1789). In sequence, Anna Matilda’s response reads almost like a non
sequitur because it does not respond specifically to the substance of
42 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Della Crusca’s poem. Her response exclusively figures itself in terms


of the frisson of reading his style and makes his poem seem rather
tame in comparison—again creating a comedy of incongruity in the
bland conventionality of the original poem’s Petrarchan poetics and
the erotic immediacy of the response:

O! seize again thy golden quill,


And with its point my bosom thrill!
With magic touch explore my heart,
And bid the tear of passion start. (10 July 1787)

A remarkably sensual—if not downright carnal—opening indeed,


even if its language is all figure. This quality is markedly characteristic
of these poems: they are sexy, aware of their own eroticism, and highly
conscious of the ways in which that eroticism is created and sustained
entirely through text, through figure, through a shared language of
play. It is breathless and is in fact the shortest poem of their corre-
spondence; it is as though the excitement of the encounter can hardly
be contained. Cowley’s experience as a playwright is visible here with
an opening volley of sparkling erotic repartee—keep in mind Merry’s
poem only addresses Cupid and bears no evidence of expecting an
actual reply from anyone. And “The Pen” itself obviously is phallic
and erotic, as Jerome McGann and Jacqueline Labbe have discussed:
echoing D. H. Lawrence, McGann calls the Della Cruscan exchange
“sex in the head,” although Cowley’s poem points to other parts of
the body as well; Labbe writes of these lines that Anna Matilda “offers
her bosom” and “invites her own penetration” (McGann 82; Labbe,
Romantic 56). While both critics are correct, I would emphasize the
poem’s apparent bawdiness rather than a more cerebral erotic reading.
Anna Matilda is obviously randy, but this rather surprising opening
allows the poem to develop its own dynamic. Comically, the poem
pays no real tribute to the quality of Della Crusca’s verse and merely
certifies it as verse, responding instead to his passion and sensibility.
Indeed, the poem is practically an exhortation to write better poetry.
Responding to the comic Ovidian elements, Cowley creates an even
more explicitly Ovidian tension between Apollo and Cupid in a pleas-
ing metaphor of the poet’s quill having fallen from “Cupid’s burnish’d
wing” as the god drew his arrow, then being snatched by Apollo. Anna
Matilda advises Della Crusca, therefore, to “Be worthy then the sacred
loan!” and he ultimately will be rewarded with love. Cowley knew
what “Della Crusca” meant too. And Merry responded in kind with a
tribute to Anna Matilda as “the Muse!” (31 July 1787).
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 43

A playful network emerges when we consider the maneuverings


and in-jokes of its participants and the evidence of such in the vari-
ous texts and paratexts of the World. They clearly were having fun
with it; and so was the public, who became involved in the fiction
of the Della Cruscans just as readers would follow the serial narra-
tives of Dickens or, today, on television. I doubt many of them cared
whether it was real or not. It was charming and entertaining.14 But
when read closely, the exchange is not all “sex in the head.” Much of
it is about formal and metrical play, with Anna Matilda frequently
criticizing Della Crusca’s essays in verse. The formal engagement is
part of the pleasure derived from these heteroerotic exchanges, these
textual thrusts and parries; this is important for understanding Mary
Robinson’s beginning her career with Della Crusca, and it will be
necessary for understanding the end of her career as she engages with
Coleridge (to be discussed further in chapter five). Take, for example,
Anna Matilda’s poem “To Della Crusca” from 22 December 1787,
her fourth poem to him: in it, she responds to the tone and to the
form of Della Crusca’s previous poems, encouraging him to write
something new and different. Her poem opens, “I HATE the Elegiac
lay— / Choose me a measure jocund as the day!” In the previous
weeks, Della Crusca had published his poem on prison-reformer John
Howard and his antiwar Fontenoy poem; but more to her point is the
fact that his previous two poems have been in elegiac quatrains—his
popular “Elegy Written on the Plain of Fontenoy” (16 Nov. 1787)
and his latest “To Anna Matilda” (5 December 1787). She points out
that he should vary his meter after two poems in the same form and
urges him to do something wildly irregular:

And be thy lines irregular, and free!


Poetic chains should fall, before such bards as thee.
Scorn the dull laws that pinch thee round,
Raising about thy verse a mound,
O’er which thy Muse so lofty! dares not bound.
Bid her in verse meandering sport;
Her footsteps quick, or long, or short
Just as her various impulse wills—
Scorning the frigid square, which her fine fervor chills. (World 22
December 1787)

This passage portends much for the reading of Mary Robinson’s


poetry—and her prosody—for it prefigures the way she will respond
to Merry’s poetry and ultimately to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” The
varying meters here also illustrate precisely the advice Anna Matilda
44 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

gives. Following her “various impulse,” Cowley plays with syllabics,


largely eschewing strict metrical feet, going for a sprightly effect in
extending and contracting the lengths of the lines in order to vary the
temporal recurrence of rhyme: the first couplet consists of ten- and
twelve-syllable lines; the triplet consists of two eight-syllable lines with
a concluding ten-syllable line; the next couplet of two eight-syllable
lines; the final couplet (given above) consists of an eight-syllable line
and then a twelve-syllable line. Cowley thus intends for the sound to
seem an echo of the sense. The “frigid square,” moreover, is a clever
way of describing the elegiac quatrain itself.
Moreover, his most recent poem “To Anna Matilda” ends with
Della Crusca depressed, claiming that, had she been there to com-
fort him, he would not have found so much despair in Belgium. His
comical equivocation thus subverts the sentiments expressed in the
“Elegy Written on the Plain of Fontenoy,” which was Della Crusca’s
most celebrated poem. After Anna Matilda’s critical response to
the elegy, this particular poem ends with Della Crusca wallowing
in his misery, his new humanitarian concern, having once again
bid farewell to love. Unlike the dead soldiers he previously had
mourned who, as Anna Matilda had pointed out, at least died with
valour, Della Crusca whines, “To me, no proffer’d meed must e’er
belong, / To me, who trod the vale of life unknown, / Whose
proudest boast was but an idle song.” (World 5 December 1787).
In her poem of 22 December, she basically advises him to get over
himself and go back to writing about love, which is a lot more fun
than war and death. Afraid that he will write no more love poetry,
feeling no longer the delicious pain, she reprimands his willingness
to settle for less:

Vapid Content her poppies round thee strew,15


Whilst to the bliss of TASTE thou bid adieu!
To vulgar comforts be thou hence confin’d,
And the shrunk bays be from thy brow untwin’d.

Such condemnation of Della Crusca’s latest poetry illustrates the way


the writers were able to create tension that would keep readers inter-
ested. After all, they were not characters on a stage whose plot could
be enacted; the writers had to develop the relationship between their
avatars in a strictly textual and intertextual fashion. Anna Matilda’s
poem closes with the suggestion that Della Crusca’s preoccupation
with extra-erotic concerns sounds like someone running for pub-
lic office: responding to his description of his formerly erotic self as
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 45

having “grown a breathless statue at the sound” of a “female voice,”


Anna Matilda retorts,

Thy statue torn from Cupid’s hallow’d nitch,


But in return thou shalt be dull, and rich;
The Muses hence disown thy rebel lay—
But thou in Aldermanic gown, their scorn repay;
Crimson’d, and furr’d, the highest honours dare,
And on thy laurels tread—a P LUMP L ORD M AYOR !

She teases him with an unflattering vision of himself as a compla-


cent burgher rather than the poetic playboy to whom she initially
responded (and whom she may have known Merry actually to be).
This is actually a comic invitation to drop the earnest pose and to
play. In this context, then, I find it difficult to take seriously the
Della Crusca poem that appears three days later, “Ode to Death,”
in which “Young Ammon” (Alexander the Great) succumbs in the
following manner to personified Death, the subject of the address:
“The World I’ve won!”—THOU gav’st the withering nod, / Thy FIAT
smote his heart,—he sunk,—a senseless clod!” (25 December 1787).
This poem also ends with what has to be a parody of the most com-
mon trope of Sensibility, particularly after the Werter sensation of
the 1780s; one that appears frequently in Smith’s popular Elegiac
Sonnets: “Then tho’ I scorn thy stroke—I call thee FRIEND, / For in
thy calm embrace, my weary woes shall end.” Merry’s Della Crusca
avatar was a way to employ the popular Werter-like trope, even as it
started to become moribund, with a fresh touch of irony that made it
all the more fun.
The speculation on the identity of Della Crusca and Anna Matilda
fueled interest in The Poetry of the World during the summer of 1788.
Topham teased his readers with it: “Who will say a Lady cannot keep
a Secret?” he writes, while reminding them that “Anna Matilda’s
Laurel” “has trembled over the heads of Mrs. Piozzi, Mrs. Cowley,
Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Seward—each of whom has disclaimed any
pretensions to it” (World 29 July 1788). Reviewing The Poetry of the
World, a critic for the English Review suggested that Della Crusca and
Anna Matilda are the same person, based on stylistic likenesses in the
poems and a similar lack of “judgment and good taste,” adding that
“the orgasm is sometimes so violent as to carry the poet far beyond
the precincts of common-sense” (127). Exactly. Such excitement
was appropriate perhaps in the pages of a disposable newspaper, but
the printing of the two volumes in such an elegant manner as Bell’s
46 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

innovations afforded created an apparent incongruity. Expressing


some reservations about its journalistic provenance, a critic for the
Monthly Review remarked, “all that typographical taste could do,
[Bell] has evidently done to recommend the poems before us” (449).
The poetry, though, was hardly savaged. The Monthly Review critic,
who identifies Merry as Della Crusca, actually congratulated the pub-
lic on the poems “being thus rescued from the perishing pages of
a daily print” (449). The worthiness of their preservation was part
of the marketing strategy as the narrative came to a close. While at
first the tone and taste of the poems seemed to consign them to the
commercialized and ephemeral space of the newspaper, paradoxically
their very popularity allowed them to shift registers, to be reified in
the pages of the print book.
The correspondence between Della Crusca and Anna Matilda had
worked itself up to a pitch that they could not sustain. Anna Matilda
ultimately declared herself a votary of Indifference, promising Della
Crusca only friendship and, to his dismay, chastity. Della Crusca
signed off on 17 May 1788, bidding farewell to Anna Matilda, to
England, and to poetry. His conclusion of the poetic affair impugns
Anna Matilda as nothing more than a tease:

And cou’dst thou think ’twas my design,


Calmly to list thy Notes Divine,
That I responsive Lays might send,
To gain a cold Platonic Friend?
Far other hopes thy Verse inspir’d,
And all my Breast with Passion fir’d.

This conclusion of the affair—there, of course, would be a sequel—


finds Della Crusca also blaming poetry for seducing him from more
lucrative ventures; and, in a burlesque of the conclusion of Pope’s
Eloisa to Abelard, he calls the Muse to take his “Flute,” perhaps
recalling his phallic quill, and “plunge it in Oblivion’s wave,” while
acknowledging the likelihood of the exchange’s preservation for
future readers, to whom he asserts that “no kind intercourse the Song
repaid” and that the two remained finally “a Shadow and a Shade.”
The sequence is actually a comically amoebean competition between
the two poets in which the man is motivated by his sexual frustration
and the woman by her poetic frustration, as she continues to exhort
him to control himself and to develop his mind. Poem after poem
records their adoration of and admonitions to one another; when read
as playful popular culture, they are hilarious.
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 47

Popular culture always seeks, in spite of the odds, its own perpetu-
ation. Topham and Bell, surely with Merry and Cowley in tow, found
in this a golden opportunity. With his final poem, Della Crusca writes
to Topham of his removal to a great distance, which “would render
communication difficult and hazardous” (World 17 May 1788). He
adds wryly,

As to the Poems, if you think proper to collect and reprint them in a


more durable form, I submit them, with some other Productions here
adjoined, to your disposal; and I write this Letter, to empower you
to make over my right to Mr. BELL , or any other person you may
approve.

Of course, within just a few days, Topham announced the publication


by Bell of The Poetry of the World, including the previously empha-
sized “other Productions,” particularly a tragedy by Della Crusca
(22 May 1788). Anna Matilda, though, gets the last word on 26
May 1788 with her melodramatic goodbye to Della Crusca and, of
course, to poetry as well. But in closing, she imagines Della Crusca
singing a sweeter song than Petrarch’s over Laura’s grave, doubting
his constancy to her while comparing herself to a faithfully monoga-
mous swan. Thus she envisions her own death and her final words—
inevitably, “Della Crusca.” Topham’s headnote, however, guarantees
immortality to them both:

There is a period, when Envy and Malevolence will wound no lon-


ger. That period has arrived to these Poems. United, and yet mutu-
ally unknown, as have been DELLA CRUSCA and A NNA M ATILDA ;
– admired as they have been by all who have taste for Poetry – some
have been found, who attempted at their abuse, in abusing the
PAPER which conveyed them to the Public. They are now, however,
going into a form, where Impression will be lasting; where praise
will be unmixed; and it is amongst the best praises of these Poems,
that they have set with the same splendour with which they rose.—
Undiminished in Death! (26 May 1788)

In terms such as these, the transformation from ephemeral newspaper


to literary immortality is a comically hyperbolic apotheosis, a whimsi-
cal take on the poetic pursuit of eternal fame. But as a marketing ploy,
it also speaks to the commercial value of the poetry. The permanent
“form” results from an investment of capital that promised a greater
return than daily newspaper sales.
48 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Laura as Laurel
The promise of literary fame was a powerful charm for Robinson, in
addition to the professional and social opportunities she would have
recognized upon her return to England. So, she begins publishing
poetry in the World. Her debut poem is deliberately modest: “Lines,
Dedicated to the Memory of a Much-Lamented Young Gentleman,”
appeared in the World on 24 October 1788. On the day before its
appearance, the “To Correspondents” column promoted Laura in
juxtaposition with the return of Della Crusca, who had been silent
since his last farewell, just prior to the publication of The Poetry of
the World: “Della Crusca—if possible, to-morrow. . . . L AUR A—is
received, and shall have that attention she so deservedly merits.”
Space concerns, however, prevented the publication of Della Crusca’s
seventy-line poem until four days later; on 24 October, the paper
made a flattering apology to Della Crusca, noting that “A KENSIDE
and THOMSON are the only Poets of late fit to talk of with him.” That
day, deferring the publication of Della Crusca’s latest poem, Topham
and Este printed Robinson’s short, fourteen-line poem instead.
Robinson likely knew that a shorter poem had a better chance of
publication.
This particular poem is, as its title suggests, an elegiac lament
praising the memory of this young man, emphasizing his virtue and
integrity. The poem concludes with the allegorical figure of Genius
mourning the loss of her “Darling Son” (1: 51; 12). It is a serious
and earnest composition. Robinson’s signature, “Laura,” refers to the
eternal virtue Petrarch’s beloved ultimately represents as she leads him
from eros to agape over the course of his Canzoniere. Possibly the
poem’s fourteen lines are a general allusion to the sonnet form—or
they are merely a coincidence. But the poem is not, strictly speaking,
a sonnet because it is in couplets and lacks the rhetorical structure
and development of a sonnet. None of Robinson’s sonnets consist of
couplets. In her 1791 volume, the poem is significantly longer and
has been retitled as “Lines to the Memory of Richard Boyle, Esq.
Son of Mrs. Walsingham.” Robinson’s 1791 volume includes, in addi-
tion to the expanded version of this poem, another one on the young
man’s death, “Elegy to the Memory of Richard Boyle, Esq.” com-
posed appropriately in elegiac quatrains, along with a note indicating
he died in Bristol. The newspaper poem elides any such connections
or identifying references—and may be simply a fourteen-line excerpt
from the longer version of the poem. More important is the signature,
which is not as modest as the poem itself. The “Laura” avatar allows
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 49

Robinson to write as Petrarch’s Laura, alive and subjectified, as a lyric


agent rather than a lyrical object. Well aware that Petrarch was the first
modern poet laureate, she also understood the punning relationship
between Laura and laurel. Petrarch’s love for Laura remains famously
unconsummated, while the poet transforms her ultimately into a sym-
bol of virtue and of his own poetic achievement, the laureate, favored
by Apollo, god of poetry. Temporarily effacing her own identity and
her much-discussed sexual past, Robinson thus was able to remake
herself as an unstained avatar of poetic authority and legitimacy. At
the same time as she is inserting herself in the Della Crusca network,
she is inserting herself into an intertextual network of literary tradi-
tion, using the avatar to craft both a poetic and a professional self.
For the Laura avatar was networking, of course. Robinson likely
also read Miles Peter Andrews’s love poem “To Laura,” signed
“Arley,” in The Poetry of the World, which appeared first in the
paper on 1 September 1787 (2: 52–4). Robinson knew Andrews
from her days in the theatre and among the fashionable elite
(Memoirs 7: 236), so her choice of pseudonym may suggest the
assumption of the role of Arley’s beloved and thus signaling her
desire to participate in the network established by The Poetry of
the World. The “Laura” Arley addresses, as its headnote indicates,
was an actress he loved but who has died—thus the allusion to
Petrarch’s deceased Laura. The original headnote from the World
in 1787 remains unchanged through all subsequent reprintings
of the poem in The Poetry of the World and in the four editions
of Bell’s British Album: “The following Lines were the earliest
offering to a Young Lady—whose Theatric talents once formed
the ornament of the Stage—on which she appeared; and whose
Memory will be honoured by the Drama which she adorned.” If
Robinson is alluding to Arley’s poem, then she here too takes on
the persona of an adored but deceased young woman, but this
time she is an actress, again a figurative effacement of her past. As
a playwright, and one of the oldest in the group, Andrews surely
knew many young actresses, so there is no reason to believe that
this poem in any way refers to Robinson, who was still in Europe
and no longer supposed dead when it first appeared. In fact, the
celebrated actress Mary Ann Yates had just died in May of 1787.
Yates, Andrews, and Robinson all were affiliated with Drury Lane
and thus with the network around David Garrick and thus with
Sheridan. Robinson appeared on stage with Yates, as she recalls
in her Memoirs (7: 244, 374). In addition to the Petrarchan sig-
nificance, Robinson may have picked the name out of The Poetry
50 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

of the World as an homage to Andrews and as an indication of


her desire to join the Della Crusca network. Moreover, by assum-
ing the sobriquet Andrews gives to Yates as well as the name of
Petrarch’s deceased beloved, Robinson asserts her survival in the
figurative killing of her past self, Perdita.
Robinson’s second appearance as Laura in the World likely also
derived from her reading of Topham and Bell’s anthology. “To Him
Who Will Understand It” appeared 31 October 1788, with the Laura
signature; its title recalls Arley’s “Elegy. To the Lady Who Will Best
Remember It,” which first appeared on 2 October 1787 and which
appeared in The Poetry of the World (2: 57–9). Robinson wrote the
poem almost certainly after her return to England. The Memoirs pro-
vide an account of the poem’s composition as an impromptu social
performance:

Conversing one evening with Mr. Richard Burke, respecting the facil-
ity with which modern poetry was composed, Mrs. Robinson repeated
nearly the whole of those beautiful lines, which were afterwards given
to the public, addressed – “To him who will understand them.” . . . This
improvisatoré produced in her auditor not less surprise than admira-
tion, when solemnly assured by its author, that this was the first time
of its being repeated. (7: 276–8)

Although biographers tend to see this widely reprinted poem as a


doleful address to Tarleton, which it partly is, this account certainly
emphasizes the playful spontaneity that is apparent in the poem.16
What poets are more likely to have inspired the subject of conversa-
tion, the “facility” of “modern poetry,” than Della Crusca and Anna
Matilda? Robinson’s improvisation is a pretty vigorous pastiche, if
not all-out parody, of Della Crusca and Anna Matilda’s style, down
to the octosyllabic couplets that most frequently characterize their
poetic exchanges. It has all the requisite expressions and tropes of
popular culture—the farewell to England, the “mournful Philomel,”
the arduous escape from heartbreak, and the refuge in, of all places,
Italy. Like Merry’s “Adieu and Recall to Love,” her ironic renuncia-
tion of passion and its “throbbing Pulses” playfully emphasizes the
throbbing:

Nor will I cast one thought behind,


On Foes relentless—Friends unkind;—
I feel, I feel their poison’d Dart
Pierce the Life Nerve within my Heart,
‘Tis mingled with the Vital Heat
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 51

That bids my throbbing Pulses beat;


Soon shall that Vital Heat be o’er,
Those throbbing Pulses BEAT no more—
No!—I will breathe the spicy Gale,
Plunge the clear Stream, new Health exhale;
O’er my pale Cheek diffuse the Rose,
And DRINK OBLIVION TO MY WOES ! (1: 53; 73–84)

In a biographical reading, the poem stands as an appeal to


Robinson’s real-life lover, Tarleton, and a threat to take refuge with
her brother, a merchant in Italy. But it is otherwise unremarkable
on its own, and does not live up to Topham’s panegyric the next
day: He writes, “More fanciful and pathetic Lines, are scarcely to
be found in the whole body of English Literature” (1 November
1788). This is the puff for which Robinson was aiming. In con-
text with the poems the World was famous for printing, moreover,
this poem is practically an erotic invitation for correspondence with
Della Crusca. Robinson certainly intended for this poem to be read
in the series—as all of the best poems in the World were read—
knowing that Anna Matilda had complained that Della Crusca’s
proposed sojourn in Italy invariably would result in his infidel-
ity; Anna Matilda knows that “there, if right I ween, the Maid
I NDIFFER ENCE dies!” (World 1 April 1788). When Robinson sent
the poem, she may not have realized that Della Crusca was on his
way back to England and to Anna Matilda.
Della Crusca’s delayed poem to Anna Matilda (“IN vain I fly
Thee—’tis in vain”) announcing his return appeared three days
before Laura’s “To Him Who Will Understand It,” on 28 October.
In it, Della Crusca complains of Anna Matilda’s infidelity to him with
Greatheed’s Reuben avatar, referring to her poem “To Reuben,” which
appeared exclusively in her solo volume, The Poetry of Anna Matilda,
that fall: “Ah, R EUBEN is the name I hear!—/ For him my faithless
A NNA weaves / A wreath of Rose and Myrtle Leaves. . . . ” This refer-
ence is a plug for her book, which was printed and sold by Bell. Merry
thus revives the correspondence in the paper as a way of inscribing the
book’s publication back into the network, while promoting them at
the same time. In the poem, Della Crusca also remarks on the English
Review’s supposition that he and Anna Matilda are one person; he
turns this into ludic-erotic fodder:

For e’en cold Critics have conceiv’d,


So much alike our measures run,
52 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

And e’en the gentle have believ’d,


That A NNA, AND THAT I, WERE ONE.—
Would it were so!—we then might prove
The sacred, settled unity of Love.

Unbeknownst to Merry, however, Cowley had left England for France,


as the World reported on 5 September 1788, where she would remain
until the next summer. With no response from Anna Matilda, Della
Crusca was not heard from again in the papers, although Bell pub-
lished his long poem Diversity before the end of the year.
Having received no response from Della Crusca, Robinson’s Laura
made another, more blatant attempt to catch his attention. Her poem
“The Muse” appeared 13 November 1788, with a taunting edito-
rial headnote: “Of Poetical Trifles, where is there, even from DELLA
CRUSCA, any Writing with more shew of Facility, and more beauti-
fully Finished than much of the following?”
While perhaps a challenge to Della Crusca, this note says a lot
about the ludic characteristics of this kind of writing—it is supposed
to give a sprezzatura- esque impression of improvisation but with some
refined polish as well. These are, after all, “poetical trifles.” Laura
invokes the muse by invoking Della Crusca with a playful allusion to
Anna Matilda’s first poem to him, “The Pen,” with its invitation to
“thrill” her “bosom” with his “golden quill”; however, Laura, in a
move characteristic of Robinson, takes command of Della Crusca’s
instrument herself:

O! LET me seize thy Pen Sublime,


Which paints in glowing dulcet Rhyme
The melting Pow’r, the magic Art,
Th’ extatic raptures of the Heart. . . . (1: 53; 1–4)

Laura’s claim to Della Crusca’s pen is perhaps a bit more earnest,


and less playfully erotic, than Anna Matilda’s poem, but her poem
shows Robinson seriously establishing herself through her avatar as
having a certain kind of popular culture cachet. The poem includes
a reference to Joseph Warton’s poem The Enthusiast; or, The Lover of
Nature (1744), which celebrates nature as a source of poetic inspira-
tion and which portrays Shakespeare as an ingenious child of nature.
It identifies the source of Anna Matilda’s phrase “golden quill” as
coming from Shakespeare (sonnet 85), and praises Italian opera com-
poser Antonio Sacchini, who lived in London from 1773 to 1781,
during which time several of his operas premiered to great acclaim.
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 53

Absorbing these influences, Laura proposes that she and the Muse/
Della Crusca share a “sweet converse” not founded on passion (1:
54; 49). Unlike her previous poem, this one is no erotic invitation;
instead, the Laura avatar rejects a sexualized Sensibility in favor of an
intellectual exchange:

But, if thy Magic pow’rs impart


One SOFT SENSATION o’er the Heart;
If thy warm precepts can dispense
One THRILLING TR ANSPORT o’er my sense;
O! keep thy Gifts, and let me fly,
In A PATHY’S cold Arms to Die. (1: 55; 61–6)

Perhaps alluding to Petrarch’s erotic fascination for Laura, the poem


asserts this Laura’s right to liberty from the thralldom that so fre-
quently limits opportunities and choices for women. This is one
of Robinson’s great themes throughout her poetry. Her choice of
Apathy is a reference to Anna Matilda’s travesty of Indifference,
but without the comic undertones that so frustrate Della Crusca.
This poem is something of a watershed for Robinson’s career: she
expanded it to include specific references to Della Crusca, Ovid, and
Pindar and placed it at the opening of her 1791 volume, where it leads
a series of irregular, mostly allegorical odes that concludes with two
odes addressed to Della Crusca and to Tarleton. Laura’s “The Muse,”
therefore, strikes the keynote for Robinson’s poetic program. She will
not escape the “thrilling transport” that poetry provokes; but, like
Edna St. Vincent Millay, she will contain the erotic chaos within the
bounds of poetic form.
Laura’s stance in “The Muse” becomes Robinson’s thesis in
“Ode to the Muse.” In the newspaper, however, it finally provoked a
response, not from Della Crusca, but “Leonardo,” on 21 November
1788. Here, the Laura avatar becomes fully initiated and inscribed
within the Della Crusca network, for, as it turns out, the Leonardo
avatar is Della Crusca in disguise. Robinson’s maneuvering herself into
the network, her reinvigorating of the heteroerotic dynamic, inspires
the creation of yet another avatar: an instance of shape-shifting on
the part of Merry that highlights the fluidity of identity and infinite
potential for play. When Leonardo’s poem, written by Merry, appears,
Topham hailed Leonardo as the latest disciple of “the Della Crusca
school,” citing the powerful influence he is having on the literary
scene. Of course, this is an inside joke because Topham undoubt-
edly knew it was Merry. In “To Laura,” a sympathetic Leonardo,
54 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

cautiously acknowledging the implicit warning in Laura’s renuncia-


tion, urges her to avoid Italy and to remain in England, where she can
learn fortitude perhaps in his company. He offers, “With mine thy
deep Afflictions blend, / And for a L OVER LOST, receive a FRIEND.”
Laura is not so easily persuaded, however. After signaling her serious
poetic ambitions in “The Muse,” Laura’s response resumes the ludic
nature of the textual network by unmasking Leonardo as a feckless
lothario:

AND dost thou hope to fan my Flame


With the soft breath of FRIENDSHIP’S Name?
And dost thou think the thin disguise
Can veil the Mischief from my Eyes?
Alas! sweet BARD, the dazzling Ray
Did long, resistless, round me play!—
In R EASON’S BURNISH’D M ANTLE drest,
It pour’d warm incense on my Breast,
My M IND in rosy fetters bound,
Then, smiling, gave th’ insidious wound. (“To Leonardo” 1: 55;
1–10)

Laura’s response thus opens by emphasizing her experience with


duplicitous offers of friendship; she has been fooled by passion dis-
guised as reason only to find her intellect held captive by her emo-
tions. This becomes a notable theme in Robinson’s work, particularly
in Sappho and Phaon, as we will see in chapter three. Thus, Robinson’s
Laura means to distinguish herself from Cowley’s Anna Matilda,
who had encouraged “Platonic” friendship. Rejecting Leonardo’s
impropriety, Laura suggests that he pursue love elsewhere that he
may again feel the “ ‘Throb Divine’ ” of poetic inspiration; that is,
erotic fascination (1: 56; 46). Here she quotes directly Della Crusca’s
phrase from his second poem to Anna Matilda (21 August 1787),
slyly indicating her suspicion that Leonardo and Della Crusca are
one in the same.
Robinson’s Laura is the catalyst for the climax of the Della Crusca–
Anna Matilda exchange as it moves toward its second and final con-
clusion. Perhaps to throw readers off and so build suspense, Leonardo
responds with a sonnet, a form not associated with Della Crusca,
in tribute to the Laura avatar. Topham, in on the joke, prefaced it
with praise of the composition as “metrically correct, after the man-
ner of PETR ARCH” (10 January 1789). While not exactly the “legiti-
mate” sonnet, with an octave rhyming abbaabba, it does have the
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 55

same difficulty of rhyme (abababab) and the rhetorical structure of


the octave and sestet. Merry has his Leonardo avatar thus confirm his
passion for Laura in a poetic performance more formally controlled
than Della Crusca’s spasmodic poems to Anna Matilda. Robinson’s
Laura responded several weeks later, on 28 February 1789, with an
irregular, thus “illegitimate,” “Sonnet. To Leonardo” that consists
of eighteen lines, in which she again directly quotes Della Crusca:
her poem opens with the phrase “Chill blows the blast,” which is the
opening of his “Elegy Written on the Plain of Fontenoy.” In her son-
net, she rejects apathy as an ineffectual check on “The feast of Reason,
and the flow of Soul,” a quotation from Pope’s “First Satire of the
Second Book of Horace Imitated” (128). At the end, Laura confirms
her feelings for Leonardo/Della Crusca by admitting the pleasure
she takes in the “sweet Converse of THE FRIEND I LOVE” (1: 57; 18).
She here refers back to the “sweet converse” she seeks from the Muse
associated with Della Crusca in “The Muse.” It is a consummation
that Robinson’s Laura cleverly performs, not in a perfectly Petrarchan
form, but in her own deliberate subversion of it and its “Platonic” pre-
sumptions. As we shall see elsewhere in Robinson’s writing, especially
later in her career through the correspondence with Coleridge, the
appropriation of form for her own ends, an exuberant participation in
a formal heteroerotic engagement with her (male) counterparts, is a
hallmark of her work.
Laura’s poetic union with Leonardo/Della Crusca takes place, but
not before the intervention of a jealous Anna Matilda, who explic-
itly unmasks Leonardo as Della Crusca in a poetic harangue that
appeared two days before Laura’s “sonnet,” on 26 February 1789.
Comically incensed by his poems to Laura, Anna Matilda disavows
her love for Della Crusca with scorn for his “factitious pain,” promis-
ing that “Anna shall to thee be dead.” And in jealous fashion she also
directs her hostility toward Laura:

Yes, write to L AUR A! speed thy Sighs,


Tell her, her DELLA CRUSCA dies;
In sweetest measures sing thy woes,
And speak thy hot L OVE’S ardent throes;—
And when it next shall please your Heart
Towards some other Fair to start,
The gentle Maiden’s vers’d in cures,
For every ill, fond Love endures
She drinks Oblivion to its pains—
And vows to stain her pallid cheek
With juices of Red Grapes so sleek,
56 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

And sings adieu in Bacchanalian strains.


FALSE Lover! TRUEST Poet! now farewell!

While vilifying Della Crusca’s capricious infidelity, she also comically


misconstrues the conclusion of Laura’s “To Him Who Will Understand
It” to imply that Laura’s final image of blooming, rejuvenated health,
and her figurative drinking her woes to oblivion is actually alcoholic
dissipation. Though printed on 26 February 1789, Cowley’s poem
appears in the World with the date “December 22, 1788,” indicating
that it is a response to Merry’s first poem “To Laura.” Obviously,
Cowley is corresponding from France. And to emphasize the playful,
winking nature of all of this, I should point out that, in the same
column, just below Anna Matilda’s poem, Topham printed the fol-
lowing: “Mrs. Cowley is now at Paris; and all who know her talents,
must wish, that she may not lose her moments in inactivity.” Again,
Topham winks at his readers by visually juxtaposing the avatar with
the author’s actual identity.
Robinson naturally is quick to return the serve. Her final contri-
bution to the triangle, Laura’s “To Anna Matilda,” is the epitome of
the ludic heteroerotics as well as the lyrical exuberance that charac-
terizes the Della Crusca network and Robinson’s poetry. Although
her connection to Merry will continue, I want to end this chapter
by emphasizing how her literary debut takes place in the ludic space
of the newspaper, a space created by the network. As I hope I have
shown, the poetry of the Della Crusca network is meant to be amus-
ing. But there is serious play going on here, and it includes real literary
ambition—particularly on the part of Robinson. This exuberance is
the key to understanding Robinson’s poetry. Perhaps her poetry does
not, as Keats thought poetry ought to do, “surprise by a fine excess”;
perhaps her excesses are not so delicately fashioned. Keats believed
poetry’s “touches of beauty” should never leave its “reader breathless,
instead of content.” Perhaps he learned this from the Della Cruscans,
for whom “breathless” was a mode as well as an end. Robinson never
completely loses this, as we shall see, and she learned much of this
aesthetic from Della Crusca and Anna Matilda. Robinson’s contribu-
tions to this exchange show a fiercely ambitious poet at work, employ-
ing the formal tools at her disposal in competition with the other
poets. She is thus eager to demonstrate her own virtuosity. And she
skillfully employs her formal choices in the service of the ludic mode:
So much of this poetry counteracts pure sentimentality in favor of
a disorienting range of effects—what the reviewer mentioned ear-
lier calls an “orgasm.” This orgasm, so ineffably expressed, winks at
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 57

sensibility and that weeps at sexuality. This is a poetry about frisson


for its own sake, while knowingly and self-reflexively deploying the
tropes of Sensibility essentially for a cheap thrill. The poetry of the
Della Crusca network is deliberately a burlesque of Sensibility.
Laura’s “To Anna Matilda,” which appeared on 6 March, is dated
26 February to stress the immediacy of her response and her eagerness
to allay—with considerable irony—the other woman’s fears. Robinson
clearly understood the amoebean nature of the previous duet between
Della Crusca and Anna Matilda; but in triangulating it, she height-
ens the competition with her own considerable ambition. While Della
Crusca and Anna Matilda sing to one another and while Topham
puffs them into outrageous immortality, Robinson seems more intent
on actually earning it. “To Anna Matilda” is her first venture into
the metrical experimentation of the irregular ode. As her first two
volumes, in 1791 and 1794, prove, Robinson saw in the irregular ode
great opportunities for demonstrating her metrical versatility. She had
written some elementary odes for her 1775 volume that demonstrate
a basic understanding of the classical strophe-antistrophe-epode; for
these poems, however, she works in fixed stanza forms. Robinson’s
previous poems in the World, with the exception of her eighteen-line
sonnet, were written in octosyllabic couplets. When she comes to do
poetic combat with Anna Matilda, Robinson’s Laura must demon-
strate her facility in working in the irregular ode. In other words, her
success in the duel is contingent upon her constructing elaborate stan-
zaic units with varying rhyme schemes and meters. She must show that
she is agile and flexible in the managing of her “numbers,” which for
this kind of poetry is basically a syllabic count. To illustrate the agility
of Robinson’s metrical performance, I will chart the metrical and stan-
zaic divisions of this seventy-line poem in the following. I will begin
the rhyme scheme anew with each stanza because the rhymes do not
necessarily continue beyond, although some echoes occur. My pur-
pose here is mostly to show the variation in stanza and line length as
the poem progresses; this is an early instance of Robinson’s exuberant
innovation with form, a quality that comes to characterize her work
throughout her career. The subscript numbers indicate the quantita-
tive measure of syllables. For example, in the first stanza, the first ten
lines are octosyllabic, with a final Alexandrine couplet.

1–12: aabbccddee8ff 12
13–18: aa10bcb8c6
19–26: aabbccd8d12
27–30: aabb8
58 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

31–34: a6bb8a6
35–38: aabb8
39–44: aa10bbcc8
45–50: aabb8c10c12
51–54: abab8
55–60: aabb8cc10
61–66: aabccb8
67–70: aabb8

The poem may be ludicrous, as Robinson surely intended it to be, but


it does show Robinson more carefully constructing formal variation
than she does, say, in her supposedly improvisational composition of
“To Him Who Will Understand It.” She will perform similar metri-
cal gymnastics in her subsequent odes, including her final ode “To
the Poet Coleridge.” But it is important that we see her doing what
Della Crusca and Anna Matilda had been doing in their exchange but
doing so more deliberately and with wilder variations. This formal
experimentation, as we will see throughout this study, is essential
to Robinson’s poetic skill and will continue to be a hallmark of her
professional and literary networking.
As one might expect, Laura’s address to Anna Matilda is mischie-
vous and downright catty. In disabusing her of Della Crusca’s infidel-
ity, Laura suggests that Anna Matilda has the power to bewitch him
and thus to “ravish thence / The wond’ring Poet’s captive Sense” (1:
57; 3–4). Laura urges Anna Matilda to “dispel thy fears” and to “quit
thy rosy-pillow’d bed” (7, 9), referring to her angry rejoinder to Della
Crusca, in which she promises to retreat scornfully from poetry to her
couch, where “The freshest Rose-leaves for my head / Shall form a
blushing scented Bed” (World 26 February 1789). Laura disingenu-
ously encourages her, “round thy polish’d brow, th’ unfading Myrtle
twine” (12), in response to Anna Matilda’s previous renunciation of
the myrtle, which she calls “Love’s devoted Tree” and which “Shall
ne’er unfold its od’rous Boughs.” In other words, Laura is happy to
return Della Crusca to his original lover, but she denies Anna Matilda
the laurel wreath. She goes on to deny that Della Crusca was ever
enamored of her poetry: “No Verse of Mine, his Song inspir’d” (23).
But before doing so, she ludicrously portrays Anna Matilda as a poten-
tial murderess, urging her not to succumb to revenge and jealousy,
personified as a hideous Medusa.

Subdue the haggard Witch, whose em’rald eye,


Darts fell R EVENGE, and pois’nous JEALOUSY;
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 59

Mark, where amidst her ebon hair,


The scaly Serpents mingling twine,
While darting thro’ th’ infected air,
The murd’rous vapours shine! (13–8)

The triangulation here is significant because it emphasizes the het-


eroerotic nature of the Della Cruscan exchange and its network.
Robinson participates in a poetics founded on flirtation and fris-
son—as if Della Crusca were a prize worth fighting over.
Although she goes on to deny an erotic attachment, Laura asks
leave to admire Della Crusca from afar, to “Still gaze with hallow’d
rapture on his fire” (1: 58; 40). In so doing, Robinson proclaims
her allegiance to lyrical continental elegance, praising Della Crusca as
“Tuneful as M ETASTASSIO’s tongue, / Or glowing P ETR ARCH’s witch-
ing Song” (43–4). By citing these two Italian poets, Robinson is
inscribing other poets as part of the network in order to connect her-
self with them and their traditions; she likely also knew that Charlotte
Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets included translations of Petrarch and that
Smith’s third edition of Elegiac Sonnets (1786) added a translation
of “the thirteenth cantata of Metastasio.” She would later publish a
“Sonnet, in the Manner of Metastasio” in the Oracle on 12 November
1793. The reference in particular to Metastasio, the pseudonym of
Italian librettist and poet Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, dem-
onstrates that she is as culturally refined as Della Crusca but also
signals a deeper awareness of Metastasio’s technical virtuosity in the
writing of parts that required highly skilled sopranos. She means to
link her avatar, then, not only to Petrarch, to whom her Laura also
remains committed, but to the pseudonymous performance of for-
mal proficiency as a means to fame. For Robinson, it is important to
remember, style is substance.
Laura’s “To Anna Matilda” closes with the comical correction
of Anna Matilda’s imputation of Laura as a debauched libertine.
Referring to the previous poem, she asserts in conclusion,

’Tis not “the Bacchanalian strain”


Can draw the sick’ning soul from pain;
The “brew’d enchantment’s” poison fell!
The mellow grape’s nectarious juice
Suits the base mind—its baneful use
Throws o’er the sense a torpid spell.
But LETHE’s pure and limpid stream,
Wakes the rapt soul, from Passion’s dream,
60 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

’TIS THERE my breast shall seek repose,


And “drink Oblivion to its woes.” (1: 58; 61–70)

The joke is on Anna Matilda, as Laura archly points out that her rival
has missed the classical allusion to the river of forgetfulness, Lethe,
in Greek mythology. Moreover, she takes the opportunity to quote
Milton’s Comus (“brew’d enchantment”; 696) as a way to one-up
her opponent. But it is also playfully self-referential: Robinson per-
formed the role of “the Lady,” the character who speaks the quoted
phrase, in several Drury Lane productions of Comus in the late 1770s
(Davenport 227). Anna Matilda wrote no reply to Laura.
Thus, Robinson establishes herself as Laura in the Della Crusca
network. Meanwhile, the first poem to appear with her own sig-
nature, “Mrs. Robinson,” appeared around this time in a different
newspaper, the Star, on 25 February 1789. It seems a child-like fable
but is an allegory of competition between women—the beautiful but-
terfly and the rapacious bee, both gendered female. The moral is that
the beautiful must beware of the envious when the latter is equipped
with the wit and the malice to do harm. In this way it complements
Laura’s “To Anna Matilda”; but, signed by her own name, “The Bee
and the Butterfly” is also a direct riposte to the fashionable ladies
who took such pleasure in her downfall. What is interesting to me
is how self-consciously technical Laura’s performance is compared
with that of “Mrs. Robinson.” The avatar as a deliberate refraction of
the literary self thus gives license to the formal experimentation and
virtuosity Robinson will continue to develop. It would be a couple
of years before Robinson would reveal herself as the agent of these
avatars; but for now, the Della Crusca network provided a way for her
avatars and her poems to work as actors in the network without the
interference of Robinson’s authorial self and its previous associations.
“Laura” was her way of beginning to earn the “laurel,” “the Wreath
of Fame,” with which her poetry is obsessed. The avatar is itself a kind
of poetic form.
My purpose in this chapter has been to establish the terms of the
Della Crusca network, commercial and literary. For the first couple
of years, this network was popular and entertaining—a ludic paradise
of sorts that would soon prove unrecoverable as Merry and Robinson
each became involved in the other’s politics as well as the other’s
poetry. Robinson’s profound affinities with Merry constitute a major
obstacle for appreciating her poetry today, because the teleology of
British Romanticism implies a renunciation of this kind of verse.
From Gifford’s attack on the Della Cruscans in the Baviad (1791)
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I 61

to Wordsworth’s disavowal of the “gaudiness and inane phraseol-


ogy of many modern writers” in the advertisement to Lyrical Ballads
(1798), most of the decade appears to be devoted to marshaling pow-
erful forces against the preservation of this poetry. But, as Jacqueline
Labbe suggests, a few choice phrases from “Gifford’s jeremiad” have
done the work of actually reading Merry’s poetry (39). Edward E.
Bostetter made a similar point in 1956 (277). The image of the Della
Cruscans as “a particularly affected and silly group of sentimental ver-
sifiers” is part of the lore (Bostetter 277); but, as this chapter asserts,
“sentimental” is imprecise, if not wildly inaccurate. Now that we have
recovered Robinson for feminist and historicist purposes, we must
come to terms with Merry’s influence on her poetry. The study of her
poetry reveals a remarkable lyrical ebullience that comes from Della
Crusca and the ludic nature of this network. Once we orient ourselves
to the poetics of lyric, ludic, and erotic extravagance that characterizes
her work, we will recognize these elements as essential to appreciating
it. In a way, Robinson’s lyrical extravagance is part of the sociability
of literary exchange. This social exuberance, as the next chapter will
explore, is also deeply rooted in Robinson’s enthusiasm for humani-
tarian and political causes. This is why she became such good friends
with John Wolcot, who wrote excessively silly yet vitriolic satirical
poetry as “Peter Pindar.” In fact, Wolcot and William Godwin were
the only mourners to attend her funeral. Moreover, it was actually
Merry who introduced Robinson to William Godwin (Paul 1: 154).
Merry, Godwin, Wolcot, and Robinson, later, participated ultimately
in a network of disenfranchised radicals who had associations with
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and Morning Post editor Daniel
Stuart. But Merry was first, and her poetic correspondence with him
established patterns of professional and poetic networking she would
follow until the end of her career.
Chapter 2

Be l l’s L au r e at e s I I: . . . S o G oe s
t h e Wor l d

Frederick Reynolds in his 1826 autobiography insists that Merry


believed that Anna Matilda would turn out to be the woman of his
dreams and that he was dismayed to find Cowley instead. Topham
and Este, on Merry’s insistence, arranged a meeting in March of 1789
where Merry, according to W. N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley, “found him-
self in the presence not of a goddess, but of a stout, plain, respect-
able matron in her later forties!” The “fantasy was destroyed” (194).
Hargreaves-Mawdsley’s account, however, is merely a paraphrase of
Reynolds’: “when he stood in the presence of the ideal goddess of his
idolatry, and saw a plain respectable matronly lady—simply poetical
and platonic, he walked away in sad dudgeon . . . ” (2: 187–8). James
Boaden gives a more favorable account, reporting that “Merry was
an enthusiast in beauty as well as verse; and the proportion of the
former to the latter in the lady was less than might be desired: with
a rhapsodical farewell, the correspondence closed” (217). This story
has become part of Della Cruscan lore: it makes Merry foolish and
Cowley pathetic, and perpetuates the fiction of the poetic romance
as founded on genuine passion that was dismantled by the revelation
of Anna Matilda’s attachment to another. Cowley was already the
wife of a government functionary who had bolted to India. Hester
Piozzi, who knew Merry’s secret all along, discovered as early as 1
April 1789—April Fool’s Day—that Cowley was Anna Matilda and
expressed her relief to learn that Merry was not writing love poems
to himself (Thraliana 2: 740). Later that month, Merry publicly
revealed himself as “Author of the Della Crusca Poems” when his
64 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

“Ode on the Restoration of His Majesty” appeared under his own


name in several London newspapers. This revelation comes in the
midst of the Laura–Leonardo imbroglio, but with a final volley from
Anna Matilda yet to come. On 2 June 1789, the World printed its
final poem of the exchange in which Anna Matilda writes to Della
Crusca with the ridiculous allegation that Della Crusca’s new lover,
Laura, is actually a man. The affair finally had run its course: when
the revelation of their actual identities came, the public greeted it
with a yawn.
The end comes when the two lovers bid one another farewell, not
in the columns of the World but in Bell’s new anthology, the two-
volume British Album, which appeared on New Year’s Day 1790. The
final arc of the narrative has more to do with the reconstitution of the
Della Crusca network than with either writer’s real-life attachments.
Merry may not have known that Anna Matilda was Cowley, but I see
no reason to believe Reynolds’ story that Merry seriously harbored
a romantic interest in her.1 Indeed, Reynolds, like many of Merry’s
former associates embarrassed by his enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, turned against him; the story about Della Crusca’s dis-
appointment is recounted only years later by older, more conserva-
tive men who were interested in making Merry look foolish because
of his political views. The Della Crusca network is interrupted and
ultimately dismantled by the French Revolution, more specifically by
Merry’s and Robinson’s poetic involvement in the Revolution debate.
Obviously, the ludic impulses of the Della Crusca network could not
be sustained in the political atmosphere of the early 1790s.
In 1790, Bell published Robinson’s first volume of poetry in over
a decade, Ainsi va le monde (“so goes the world”), a tribute to Robert
Merry’s celebration of the French Revolution, The Laurel of Liberty,
which Bell also published. In so doing, Bell consolidated a literary
empire that featured two hugely successful poets: Merry, who had
since dropped the Della Crusca avatar, and Robinson, who contin-
ued to proliferate hers. Within a short time, Merry’s fortunes, how-
ever, would fall as Robinson’s would rise. As M. Ray Adams long ago
observed, Merry’s political verse amounted to the “sloughing off of
his romantic inanities” (“Robert Merry” 25). Merry certainly saw it
this way. However, the difference in the way Robinson and Merry
managed their respective avatars at this juncture accounts for their
relative success and failure. Obviously, as the environment changed,
the ludic-erotic poetry of the Della Crusca network became quaint
and superfluous. Merry, like Robinson, did have serious poetical
ambitions; as Della Crusca, his writing for the World included, for
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 65

example, his poem on the humanitarian efforts of prison reformer


John Howard, “Howard, the Phil-Anthrope,” his widely praised anti-
war poem “Elegy Written on the Plain of Fontenoy,” or his abolition
poem “The Slaves. An Elegy.” But publishing these sober humani-
tarian pieces with the Della Crusca avatar was a miscalculation on
Merry’s part—such works confused readers because the avatar seemed
factitious, undermining the social and political sincerity these poems
undoubtedly were attempting to express. Merry’s professional, politi-
cal, and poetical miscalculations included the presumption that his
own authorial identity could overwrite the Della Crusca avatar as a
more coherent writerly self. As Merry became a politically committed
poet, this presumption would be his downfall, most devastatingly
at the hands of William Gifford. Della Crusca made it easy to attack
Robert Merry. Mary Robinson, for all her indebtedness to Merry as
a model, avoided making similar mistakes through the proliferation
and reconstitution of her various avatars.
The dispersal of the Della Crusca network involves the business
concerns of Bell and Topham and the reinvention of Mary Robinson as
“Laura Maria”—a new avatar that represents a more refined and ide-
alized, and eventually a more politically engaged, version of Robinson
than “Laura” does. While Laura develops an affiliation with Della
Crusca in order to achieve poetic fame, Laura Maria pays homage to
Merry himself as well as to his political views. Robinson’s association
with Merry and with Bell put her at the center of the liberal literati’s
response to the French Revolution. In the second half of the decade,
Robinson becomes increasingly radical; however, this chapter focuses
on the first stage of Robinson’s political engagements during which
her politics are more ambivalent, in contrast with her positions during
the final years of her life. As Robinson becomes politically engaged,
her formal choices reflect these interests. Her assiduous networking
continues as she attempts to assert and to maintain control of her ava-
tars and her poetic forms—even as Merry loses control of his.

Power Centers
The course of Robinson’s career reveals a consistent program of
positioning herself literally and figuratively close to powerful men.
Her residences in Brighton, on St. James Street, even finally at Old
Windsor, reveal patterns of geographical affiliation with her former
lover, the Prince of Wales, on whom Robinson depended for a portion
of her income. Such choices did not go unnoticed by the press: observ-
ing her proximity to the Prince in Brighton, the Public Advertiser
66 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

remarked, “Mrs. Robinson improves in her poetical flights—the


sight of her princely Corydon gives fresh animation to her rural
theme” (29 July 1790). Though the correspondent resists the Perdita
and Florizel appellations, the pastoral allusion nonetheless serves to
remind readers of the stage-setting in which the Shakespearean name-
sakes of Robinson and the Prince performed, and thus, of course, of
Robinson’s previous infamy. For practical reasons, Robinson could
not forsake the Prince, depending as she did on her promised annu-
ity from him. She similarly stayed close to Fox, although in more
figurative ways. Her personal and professional survival required the
maintenance of these, and other, connections.
Unraveling Robinson’s political affiliations at the beginning of
her literary career is a complicated endeavor because the Whigs were
divided over issues ranging from the impeachment trial of Warren
Hastings to the Prince’s illegal marriage to Maria Fitzherbert.
Because the London papers were either subsidized by the government
or the opposition—and because the opposition itself was divided—
Robinson had to choose carefully where to send her poetry. When
she returned to England, Bell and Topham’s World was popular, but
it also was subsidized by the Treasury, which expected quid pro quo
in the form of favorable political coverage. Rather than extolling Pitt,
Topham and Sheridan obliged by attacking Fox, the Prime Minister’s
chief opponent and Sheridan’s frequent bête noir. Robinson did not
publish in the World until it became known that the Prince had
agreed to subsidize the paper: in September of 1788, the Prince paid
Topham a huge sum of money to cease attacks on his illegal wife,
Maria Fitzherbert; for the rest of the year the paper was recognized
as having the support of the Prince and his faction (Werkmeister,
London 163–5). Robinson’s first poem in the World appeared on 24
October 1788. Her loyalty to Fox, prior to this arrangement, may
have prevented her from contributing to a Ministerial paper such as
the World; however, even though Topham and Sheridan continued to
denounce Fox throughout the year, Robinson’s loyalty to the Prince
trumped her attachment to Fox. Robinson notably did not begin
her career at one of the opposition papers, where some of her later
friends—John Wolcot, John Taylor, Daniel Stuart—worked.
Robinson also intended to stick close to Bell, who advertised him-
self as “bookseller to the Prince of Wales.” That fall, around the time
Merry began writing as Leonardo to Robinson’s Laura, the King’s
illness became public knowledge, reported by all of the newspapers.
When Fox declared in December his support for the Prince becom-
ing Regent, with full monarchical authority, the World relented
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 67

temporarily in its assaults, as all of the quarreling Whigs (Burke, Fox,


and Sheridan) had a stake in the Prince’s aggrandizement. In oppo-
sition to Fox, Pitt supported a new bill that would severely curtail
the Prince’s authority as Regent. The shifting of the leading Whigs
to more or less the same side put the World in more direct compe-
tition with the Morning Post, the leading opposition paper for the
same West End readers. Around this time, in December of 1788, Bell
decided to sell his share in the World to Topham, while the Prince
bought control of the Morning Post, to which Sheridan immediately
defected. In response, Topham sold political control of the World to
the Treasury for the huge sum of £600 per annum, which Lucyle
Werkmeister notes is the most the government ever had paid to influ-
ence a newspaper (Werkmeister 105, 166). Certainly, this is a testa-
ment to the popularity of the World if not to Topham’s integrity.
Topham’s political oscillation, motivated by money, made the World
the enemy of the opposition, and his influence on the public was
a matter of concern to committed liberals. When Topham reneged
on his promise to continue employing Bell’s printing services, Bell
responded by establishing the pointedly entitled Oracle, or Bell’s New
World on 1 June 1789.2 Robinson adroitly followed Bell, who also
took the Della Crusca and Anna Matilda avatars with him. Her brief
stint with the World as Laura would lead to a more substantial rela-
tionship with Bell, resulting in the creation of her Laura Maria avatar
and the publication of her first books.
Robinson’s professional associations before the Revolution contro-
versy are moderate and cautious, tending toward the government and
away from the extreme, Foxite opposition. Her Laura poems, discussed
in the previous chapter, appear in the World during the Regency Crisis,
and her direct engagement of Leonardo/Della Crusca and Anna Matilda
takes place after the paper becomes an organ of Pitt’s government. She
was willing to stay with the paper as long as Bell was printing it. The
publication of her poem “The Bee and the Butterfly” further compli-
cates our understanding of her political allegiances. This poem, her
first publication as “Mrs. Robinson” in over a decade, appeared in the
Star and Evening Advertiser just after the paper’s owners removed edi-
tor Peter Stuart for supposedly publishing antiministerial propaganda
during the crisis and, as he claimed, for refusing to slander the Prince
and Mrs. Fitzherbert. When “The Bee and the Butterfly” appeared,
Stuart had already established his own, nearly identical paper called
Stuart’s Star and Evening Advertiser, which began printing under that
name the week before. Robinson’s poem appears in the original Star,
however, which was unambiguous in its support of Pitt (Werkmeister,
68 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

London 241–3). At the time the poem appeared, Pitt’s bill had passed
Commons and seemed likely to pass the House of Lords, so Stuart’s
was already a lost cause. As such, Robinson would not have wished to
have her name attached to it.3 Pitt’s Regency Bill was also moot, for
that matter: the King’s recovery was reported in February and officially
announced in all the papers in early March.
Bell’s affiliation with the Prince continued until 1794. During this
time, Robinson contributed primarily to the Oracle. With this new
venture, Bell became the new center of gravity for Topham’s enemies
and castaways. Stuart devoted much of the paper to ridiculing Topham
and the World. By the summer of 1789, however, Stuart’s Star had
folded; most of its staff, particularly James Boaden, James Mackintosh,
and even Stuart himself, ended up working for Bell at the Oracle. At
the Oracle, Robinson would make important connections that would
last until the end of her career. Boaden would remain a close friend
and would write poems in Della Cruscan fashion to her Laura Maria
avatar as “Arno.” Years later, Mackintosh likely was instrumental in
arranging Robinson’s employment by his brother-in-law and Peter
Stuart’s younger brother, Daniel Stuart, at the Morning Post.
The Oracle was politically ambivalent during the early years of the
Revolution debate, before the start of the war, and before the worst
abuses of power on the part of Pitt’s government. As a businessman,
Bell was opportunistic, a fact that surely governed his conduct of
the paper. For the first six months, the paper remained neutral or at
least failed to secure financial support from either the government
or the opposition. In January of 1790, around the time Bell hired
Peter Stuart and Boaden, Bell also accepted £200 from the Treasury
(Werkmeister, London 330). Although only one-third of what the
Treasury paid Topham, this sum put the Oracle among the eight
other government-controlled newspapers. Bell, however, was unable
to remain completely loyal because many of his friends were oppo-
nents of the government. Sheridan, moreover, would resume at the
Oracle the influence he had had at the World. Sheridan also remained
close with the Prince—much to the chagrin of Burke and Fox. While
the political reporting of the Oracle is frequently contradictory and
confusing, suffice it to say that the paper generally reflected the poli-
tics of Sheridan and the Prince, which probably explains Robinson’s
affiliation with the paper.4 The government perceived the paper to be
subversive, and responded with harassing libel suits that would ulti-
mately result in Bell’s bankruptcy, announced in May of 1793, and
his temporary loss of the Oracle. Bell would not publish any books by
Mary Robinson after this time, and she would publish only a couple
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 69

of poems in the Oracle in 1794, when the paper was bought by Peter
Stuart. Robinson was for four years Bell’s laureate, although her
poems also would appear in other Treasury-supported papers such as
the Whitehall Evening Post and the Star. Before 1794, Robinson did
not publish in an opposition newspaper.

The Laura Maria Brand


When Robinson’s poetry started appearing in June of 1789, the main
interest of the Oracle was competing with the World on a cultural
rather than a political front—probably because, until Stuart’s crew
came aboard, Bell was better equipped to report fashion than news.
Bell mostly regarded the paper as a way of promoting the sale of his
books, which was far more lucrative than selling daily newspapers. In
addition, in June of 1789 Pitt’s government increased the newspaper
tax to drive opposition papers out of business (Werkmeister, London
325). So, it was safer, until a political patron could be secured from
either side, for the paper to avoid controversy and factionalism. Bell
established himself as conductor of the paper, the position Topham
held at the World, and declared in the first issue of the paper on 1 June
1789 that “A POLLO is the Standard, and he directeth THE OR ACLE
OF TRUTH !” This was an invitation to correspondents that unabash-
edly alludes to the previous success of his Apollo Press, to his naked
Apollo statue as a symbol of his phallic authority, and more generally
to the god of poetry—all promising even greater literary acclaim than
the World could do. On 8 August 1789, Bell acknowledged in the
paper the effect that Pitt’s “new impost” had on its circulation but
cheerfully reported that sales have “far exceeded” previous figures
and are rising daily because “the Public have discernment enough
to discover merit, and spirit enough to reward it.” On 9 December
1789, the Morning Post gleefully announced that Topham’s despised
World has been “abandoned by its original choir of minstrels, the
poetic DELLA CRUSCA and his tuneful disciples A NNA M ATILDA and
L AUR A.” Bell repackaged the Della Crusca network’s poetry as The
British Album, featuring the previously unpublished poems “The
Interview,” in which Della Crusca deplores Anna Matilda’s attach-
ment to another, and her final “To Della Crusca,” in which she prom-
ises to write a poem for him upon his imminent death. Bell proudly
announced on 1 December the forthcoming publication of this new
edition, including such special features as “revised and corrected”
versions of the poems, a new arrangement of the series, characteristi-
cally elegant printing—not in the manner of Poetry of the World but of
70 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Bell’s Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry—and, most exciting,


“finely engraved” “PORTR AITS of the REAL AUTHORS.” The portraits
were, of course, not of Merry and Cowley but of their avatars, imag-
ined and idealized. Bell also added Robinson’s Laura poems.
But Laura had ceased to exist. After the debut of the Oracle, only
two poems by Robinson appeared in the World. A short version of
the poem that would be called “Life” in her 1791 volume and “To
the Memory of Werter” both appeared with the Laura avatar, on
15 June and 15 July, respectively. According to the 1791 volume,
Robinson wrote the latter poem in Germany in 1786, likely after
reading Daniel Malthus’s English translation of Goethe’s novel; it
includes Robinson’s only apostrophe to Sensibility—“Thy pow’r, O
Sensibility! in magic charms to speak” (1: 61; 24)—thus marking
it as a poem of the 1780s like others by Charlotte Smith and Helen
Maria Williams. But despite Robinson’s later dating of the poem,
it also may respond to Della Crusca’s “Elegy, Written after Having
Read the Sorrows of Werter,” which appeared in the World on 26
July 1787 and subsequently in The Poetry of the World. Certainly, its
appearance in the World may have reminded readers of Della Crusca’s
poem. Robinson’s poem, however, is more complicated than Merry’s
because, where his focuses on a justification of Werter’s suicide, hers
develops a deeper rumination on the effect of the novel on the reader,
particularly on a female reader who may be more inclined to sympa-
thize with Werter. The other poem, later ironically entitled “Life,”
is a litany of ephemeral joys and inevitable sorrows that closes with
the image of Death as “a welcome Friend, / That bids the Scene of
Sorrow end” (1: 59; 27–8). With these two morbid expositions of
Sensibility, Robinson’s Laura avatar bids farewell to the World.
The change in context required a new avatar, so Robinson drops
the Laura avatar shortly after Bell begins publishing the Oracle.
Instead, she becomes Laura Maria, the avatar with which she would
be most closely identified throughout her career. This new avatar
shows Robinson’s eagerness to reconcile her pseudonyms with her
actual professional self. Obviously, this new creation fuses what is sig-
nified by the Laura avatar along with a variation of her own name—
which itself, too, carries a signifying power but is here deliberately
divested, in a sense, of its infamous and ignominious associations.
Laura Maria is a pseudonymous oxymoron, half metaphorical and half
revelatory. With Laura Maria, Robinson claims the cultural cachet
that she had earned as a Shakespearean actress and as the subject of
portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney; and she encour-
aged the recognition of the avatar as an idealized version of herself.
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 71

Moreover, Robinson designed her Laura Maria avatar specifically for


the interests of Bell’s paper, and for the refined literary elegance that
characterized his printing innovations and his book publications. The
Laura Maria avatar is also a brand directed toward an upscale liberal
audience of West End consumers. From its inception, the avatar pro-
moted Robinson’s poetry by attracting readers who would eventually
become subscribers for her debut volume. As Laura Maria, Robinson’s
characteristic lyric extravagance is refined to a baroque elegance that
showcases Robinson’s formal versatility and discipline, as well as her
aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual credentials, or, some might say,
pretensions.
The Laura Maria avatar, then, makes a claim to cultural legitimacy,
encompassing both the Petrarchan Laura revived figuratively as the self-
laureled poet, as well as the authorial Maria idealized, de-eroticized,
and recontextualized. Of all of Robinson’s avatars, Laura Maria is also
the most formally ostentatious. Given his eye for design, Bell surely
considered Laura Maria’s poems to be ornamental as well. Robinson’s
penchant for writing irregular and allegorical odes—with varying line-
and stanza-lengths—provided Bell with opportunities for elaborate
printing features, such as conspicuous indentions to emphasize rhymes
that may be several lines apart or centering stanzas containing lines
of varying lengths, plus a particularly bewildering array of italics and
small capitals. The italics and small capitals are frequently inscrutable
because they do not necessarily represent elocutionary emphases so
much as they represent the excitement or stimulation the poem offers
to the reader. These features are textual but not verbal, if not also a bit
gimmicky, and are designed to make the poems visually interesting on
the page. Bell meant for the textual representation of the poem’s for-
mal qualities to catch the eye, to “pop” off of the page. These formal
features, both in the printing and the poetics, contributed to the recep-
tion of the poetry and the ubiquitous adjective elegant that appears so
often in contemporary assessments of Robinson’s poetry and in nearly
every review of her first volume, published by Bell.
This formal elegance is not just superficial ornamentation. For
Robinson style is substance, especially in the early years of her poetic
career. Laura Maria performs elegance through the demonstrations of
metrical virtuosity and poetic fancy; the poems are intended to sug-
gest formal polish and refinement, and a pleasing ingenuity both of
metrical variation and surprising imagery.5 Laura Maria looks past
Della Crusca to William Collins and Joseph Warton. Warton’s “Ode
to Fancy” in particular is practically a poetic manifesto for Robinson’s
Laura Maria avatar. With its concluding prayer that personified Fancy
72 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

will spur some “chosen swain” to “rise above the rhyming throng” of
contemporary poets and restore England to its former literary great-
ness, Warton clearly prescribes a cure for the age’s poetic ills, which
he considers as resulting from too much didacticism in poetry. Warton
wants a poet who will write verse of passion and inspiration, who will
“O’erwhelm our souls with joy and pain” and will “With native beauties
win applause, / Beyond cold critics’ studied laws.” Warton writes in his
preface to the 1746 Odes that he considers “Invention and Imagination
to be the chief faculties of a Poet” and hopes that his odes “may be
look’d upon as an attempt to bring back Poetry into its right chan-
nel.” Similarly, in her preface to Collins’s Poetical Works (1797), Anna
Letitia Barbauld defines lyric poetry as “pure Poetry, or Poetry in the
abstract,” in which “the conceptions of the Poet (often highly meta-
physical) are rendered still more remote from common apprehension by
the figurative phrase in which they are clothed” (iv–v). Barbauld adds
that lyric poetry “depends for effect on the harmony of the verse, which
must be modulated with the nicest care; and on a felicity of expression,
rather than a fullness of thought” (v). This is as good an explanation
of the lyrical elegance Robinson was aiming for as any from the period.
Although Warton and Collins wrote their odes around mid-century
(both published their volumes in 1746), Barbauld’s commentary and
Robinson’s practice demonstrate the currency that this type of poetry
maintained at the end of the century. Robinson’s early contributions to
the Oracle as Laura Maria, moreover, show that she has heeded Warton’s
call for poetry to demonstrate invention and imagination, form and
fancy. Warton’s odes also feature a Laura who is the erotic object of the
speaker’s fancy; as with Petrarch’s Laura, Robinson’s variation on her
own name “Maria” modifies as it alludes to Warton’s Laura, making
her the lyrical subject as well as the authorial odist.
Robinson’s odes are almost always associated with the Laura Maria
avatar. Her first Laura Maria poem appeared on 24 June 1789 as
“Lines on Beauty” with the following headnote, presumably written
by Bell, as a comment on the paper’s new poetical correspondents:

Whilst we can boast the female Correspondence of an A DELAIDE, an


EDWIN, L AUR A M ARIA, SAPPHO, and others, we shall not be Jealous of
the admired talents of DELLA CRUSCA, or A NNA M ATILDA: in proof of
which we give the following very elegant Specimen.

Obviously, Bell’s puff is marketing, but also serves to remind readers of


the heyday of the World and to promise more “elegant” poetry in the
Oracle.6 She would greatly expand the poem as “Ode to Beauty” for
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 73

her 1791 volume. In its original form, Robinson’s “Lines on Beauty”


achieves its elegance well enough in a short lyric of twenty-four lines
whose form pleasingly tropes its subject, the transience of beauty. Laura
Maria addresses “EXULTING BEAUTY!” as “the phantom of an hour,”
asking, “Ah! what avails thy fascinating pow’r / Thy thrilling smile, thy
witching art?” (1: 59; 1–4). Even as Beauty’s “magic spells enchain
the heart,” the allegorical figure is also subjected to the persecution
of allegorical antagonists Envy, Flattery, and Slander. Allegorical per-
sonification such as this pervades odes of the second half of the eigh-
teenth century (and into the nineteenth, as Wordsworth’s 1807 “Ode to
Duty” illustrates). This kind of allegory derives much of its impact from
the visual effects of its textual representation in the thick columns of the
newspaper. Personifications of abstractions always merit small capitals,
and they serve as keywords for the reader’s eye to scan before, or even
without, reading the poem proper. Considering the text, paratext, and
context together shows the poem in a different light: the shape of the
stanzas, defined by the length of the lines, and Bell’s ornate printing
features recommend the poem as a pleasurable and elegant respite from
the business of the news and its dense textuality. The newspaper poem is
literally an attraction. Robinson’s job as a newspaper poet is to construct
lines and stanzas that invite readers’ attention and that offer sensual and
affective rewards without taxing them too much.
Robinson’s “Lines on Beauty” does have something to say, how-
ever, which is developed further through form. The opening apos-
trophe and subsequent allegorical assault establishes the thesis of
the poem. But the rest of the poem, in two stanzas, shifts from the
second-person didacticism to a more subjective lyricism and from
allegory to simile:

So have I seen an infant Flow’r,


Bespangled o’er with silv’ry dew,
At purple dawn’s refreshing hour
Glow with warm tints of Tyrian hue,
Beneath an aged Oak’s wide spreading shade,
Where no rude winds, or beating storms invade: (1: 59–60; 11–6)

This stanza diverges greatly from the form established in the first
stanza, with all of its allegorical nominatives. Here the speaker turns
to her own experience, using the flower as a writerly figure for beauty
instead of continuing the simpler performative allegory of the first
stanza. Obviously, her images of freshness, ripeness, and shade rep-
resent a state of innocence that cannot last. Robinson’s well-placed
74 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

colon at the end of the stanza above signals poignantly the logical
consequence of beauty:

Transplanted from its lonely bed,


No more, it scatters sweets around,
No more, it rears its fragrant head,
No more its sparkling tears begem the ground;
For ah, the beauteous flow’r, too soon
Scorch’d by the burning glare of day,—
Faints, at the sultry glow of noon,
Droops its enamel’d head— AND BLUSHING DIES AWAY. (17–24)

Beauty, Laura Maria suggests, is consumed by the admirer; uprooted


from its native fecundity, the flower cannot sustain the scorching
attention of the sun. It is a parable that pertains directly to Robinson’s
personal experience as a celebrated beauty and as a woman more gen-
erally. Only here in the final stanza does the flower achieve agency
of its own, whereas in the previous stanza it was acted upon, albeit
benevolently. Here, “transplanted,” the flower becomes an active sub-
ject but only in the qualification of what it does “no more,” and this
agency is only temporary. Again acted upon by the sun, displaced as it
is from its birthplace, the flower dies, finally achieving agency only in
its mortality—drooping, blushing, and dying. The final effect of the
poem is the surprising imagery of the flower’s “enamel’d head” and
its “blushing” death. The consummation of the flower’s existence
comes in a striking image of its ultimate adornment as a paradoxically
artificial and organic object of pleasure. Coupled with and as part of
the deployment of this trope, she means to demonstrate her ability
to refine and to modulate her lyrical performance, bringing forth her
own poetic, even formal, agency.
Robinson’s early poems in the Oracle are all devoted to imagin-
ing the literary pseudonym as elegant avatar. In other words, Laura
Maria reasserts herself as a sophisticated presence in the Oracle. But
more than this, Laura Maria is herself a metaphor, a paradox even:
the fictional ideal combined with the autobiographical self. She is per-
haps Robinson’s most important avatar in the way the persona tropes
Robinson’s obsession with the impossible contradiction between art
and nature and the mystery of their imaginative, poetic reconciliation.
Laura is art; Maria is nature. And Bell continued to support that mys-
tical presentation in promoting forthcoming poems: noting the receipt
of a new poem by Laura Maria, Bell writes to the public, “It shall be
our pride to pay the most respectful attention to her truly elegant
Poetical Effusions. To the preference given us, we are by no means
insensible; and we anxiously hope for the future communications of
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 75

this Favourite of the Muses” (8 August 1789). A pattern emerges in


the Oracle not just of puffing Laura Maria, but of positioning her as
an emblem of contemporary cultural refinement. Robinson’s second
contribution as Laura Maria, for instance, is, significantly, a poem
called “To Sir Joshua Reynolds,” an oblique reference to her having
been painted by the leading British portraitist of the eighteenth cen-
tury. The aesthetic values celebrated in this tribute to Reynolds further
demonstrate the branding of the Oracle and the Laura Maria avatar.
Again, Robinson demonstrates her facility performing—this time in
heroic couplets—what Barbauld calls “the felicity of expression, rather
than the fullness of thought.” In other words, Laura Maria’s poetry is
meant to have ambiguities that please rather than perplex. The poem
opens with imagery that suggests the ineffability of Reynolds’ genius,
“whose art can trace / The glowing semblance of exterior grace” (1:
60; 1–2). Robinson is working in a poetics of paradox that is meant
to show her sophisticated appreciation of the complexity of artistic
achievement while mimicking that achievement in verse: Reynolds’
“hand, by genius guided, marks the line / Which stamps perfection
on the form divine” (3–4). In the two pairs of opening couplets,
Robinson provides images of the artist’s impossible delimitation of
the ideal—the “tracing” of a “glowing semblance”; the “marking” of
a line that defines a divine shape. These impossible feats force “blush-
ing Nature” to confess “the power of Art.”
Robinson’s experience as an actress no doubt gave her this acute
cognizance of the relationship between nature and art. Laura Maria,
as I suggest above, is herself a paradox, not so much a character as she
is a metaphor for artistic representation. This reconciliation of the
artificial and the natural happens on the stage when the organic body
of an actor yields to the literary directives of the playwright’s text, as
Robinson knew well. She wrote to her friend John Taylor, a drama
critic himself, that “acting must be the perfection of art; nature, rude
and spontaneous, would but ill describe the passions so as to produce
effect in scenes of fictitious sorrow” (7: 304). Years later, in her final
novel, The Natural Daughter, her heroine Martha Morley attempts
a career as an actress and succeeds because she manages the perfec-
tion of making the artificial seem natural. As Robinson writes, “she
was the thing she seemed, while even the perfection of her art was
Nature” (7: 83). This is the very essence of virtuosity and elegance as
Robinson understood her aesthetic to encompass.
Yet Laura Maria is not a character for Robinson the actress to por-
tray. As an avatar, she is a refraction of Robinson’s actual self. The
issue at the heart of the Laura Maria avatar is, as I have suggested, the
relationship between art and nature and how, in the preceding quote,
76 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the perfection of art can seem to be natural. It has a particularly poi-


gnant dimension, related as it is to her performance as Perdita. In The
Winter’s Tale, Perdita and Polixenes debate this very question, when
Perdita remarks that the cross-bred carnations are “Nature’s bastards”
because “There is an art which in their piedness shares / With great
creating Nature” (4.4.87–8). Polixenes responds that the grafting is
“an art / Which does mend Nature – change it rather; but / The
art itself is Nature” (4.4.95–7). Perdita responds, as Robinson playing
her would have done, “So it is.” This scene is rich in irony because of
Polixenes’s own prejudices against impure stock and because of Perdita’s
discomfort in her costume—“Most goddess-like prank’d up”—when
she actually is a princess. But it clearly is a moment of deep resonance
for Robinson, not only because of the significance of the role itself to
her biography, but because the passage that cued her response onstage
remained an important theme in much of her own writing. The poem
to Reynolds that reaffirmed the characteristics of Laura Maria’s debut
in the Oracle explores the theme further, while Robinson allows for the
poem to reflect figuratively her own image as painted by Reynolds:

What R APHAEL boasted, and what TITIAN knew,


Immortal R EYNOLDS ! is excell’d by You.
‘Tis thine to tinge the lip with vermil dye,
To paint the softness of the melting eye;
With auburn hair luxuriantly display’d,
The iv’ry shoulder’s polish’d fall to shade,
To deck the well-turn’d arm with matchless grace,
To mark the dimpled smile on beauty’s face—
With cunning hand, the task is thine to throw
The veil transparent o’er the breast of snow. . . . (1: 60; 7–16)

Robinson is careful not to describe either of the portraits Reynolds


painted of her, but the female sitter who poses at the center of the poem
is a representative of all those, including Robinson, who provided sub-
jects for Reynolds’ art. If Robinson is thinking of her own experience
sitting for Reynolds and of the resulting portraits, then the passage
above acknowledges how little she as the sitter has to do with their
excellence. The lines emphasize instead the painter’s art, the way his
techniques and skills create the effects described in the poem. The lines
describe only Reynolds’ depictions, not the real features of the actual
subjects. Thus the ineffability of artistic genius: the breast is already
figurative as the artist paradoxically throws the transparent veil over
it, only to render it more vividly. Robinson knew of Reynolds’ theory
of “central forms,” a Platonic conception of physical forms partaking
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 77

of “one common idea and central form, which is the abstract of the
various individual forms belonging to that class,” as Reynolds writes in
the Third Discourse (42).7 The artist’s imagination must comprehend
all forms of beauty particular to a class of beings. Reynolds asserts
that the painter must “vary his compositions with figures of various
forms and proportions, though he is never to lose sight of the general
idea of perfection in each kind” (44). So, in her poem “To Sir Joshua
Reynolds,” Robinson emphasizes the subtle and elegant idealizations
that result in an artistic truth rather than a realistic depiction. It is
certainly no stretch to presume that Robinson understood this much
about her own aesthetic principles and her poetic practices.

Baroque Form
The brand was thus established. On 13 August 1789, Bell touted
an exclusive relationship with the popular Laura Maria. He writes,
“L AUR A M ARIA has already acquired Fame, sufficient to excite curios-
ity and impatience whenever her Productions are announced – that
Fame sprang from The OR ACLE – To The OR ACLE let her Productions,
and the CONSEQUENT FAME, be confined.” The word Productions is
a remarkable denotation for her poetry, as it not only emphasizes
Robinson as the producer of cultural artifacts, but also Bell’s claim on
them as his own products. For the rest of 1789, Robinson cultivated
the Laura Maria avatar as Bell did the readership of the Oracle. And
Robinson contributed a few poems under another significant avatar—
“Mrs. Robinson”—making a suitably theatrical debut in the Oracle
with “Lines Inscribed to the Memory of David Garrick, Esq.,” a tribute
to her former mentor and a public acknowledgment of her controversial
past (26 September 1789). She was preparing the public for her even-
tual revelation as the poet behind Laura Maria. Before then, Robinson
would publish as Laura Maria several odes intended to further define
the persona as a poet of great elegance and virtuosity. Most of these
continue in the allegorical vein and include odes “To Eloquence”
(5 September 1789), “To Reflection” (7 December 1789), “To the
Nightingale” (11 December 1789), “To Melancholy” (17 December
1789), and “To Meditation” (26 December 1789). Undoubtedly sev-
eral more odes appeared in 1790 in issues of the Oracle that have been
lost; these, however, were reprinted in the 1791 volume. Other than
her “Second Ode to the Nightingale,” which is in octosyllabic cou-
plets, Robinson’s “Ode to Della Crusca” is the only one of the odes to
maintain a fixed form throughout. Appropriately, this form matches
exactly Della Crusca’s “Ode to Tranquility,” which appeared first in
78 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the World on 25 August 1787 and then in Poetry of the World. Della
Crusca’s ode, as Judith Pascoe points out, formally alludes to Collins’s
“Ode to Evening” and Barbauld’s “Ode to Spring” (80). But the
important point is that her ode pays tribute to Della Crusca’s mastery
of his predecessors’ form, and thus demonstrates her own virtuosity.
This poetic form is unrhymed but develops in iambic pentameter pairs
followed by iambic trimeter pairs, sonically approaching blank verse
but with a subtle metrical syncopation. Always attentive to sound and
form, Robinson noted Merry’s nonce form and performed it as part of
her tribute to Della Crusca. She writes to him that she will “iterate thy
strain, / And chaunt thy matchless numbers o’er and o’er” (1: 103;
53–4). Her formal choice confirms this promise.8
The distinctive feature of the majority of Robinson’s odes is extreme
formal variation with particularly intricate rhyme schemes, lending
themselves to unique display on Bell’s elegantly designed page. The
first two stanzas of Robinson’s “Ode to Envy” will provide a sufficient
example of the character of most of her odes from the 1791 volume:

DEEP in th’ abyss where frantic horror bides,


In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight’s murky hour
Thy origin began:
Rapacious M ALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire.
The FATES conspir’d their ills to twine,
About thy heart’s infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating pow’r,
To blast the fairest hopes of man.
Soon as thy fatal birth was known,
From her unhallow’d throne
With ghastly smile pale Hecate sprung;
Thy hideous form the Sorc’ress press’d
With kindred fondness to her breast;
Her haggard eye
Shot forth a ray of transient joy,
Whilst thro’ th’ infernal shades exulting clamours rung. (1: 86; 1–22)

Robinson’s goal appears to be to construct stanzas with as much lyri-


cal variation as she can muster. Again, she is working in syllabic meter,
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 79

although the lines generally scan as iambic feet. The formal character-
istics of the first two stanzas may be illustrated as follows:

1–14: a10bc8a10de6fc8f6ggb8d6e8
15–22: a8a6bcc8d4d8b12

As this stanza graph indicates, Robinson’s two main formal princi-


ples are the interweaving and extension of rhymes and the exchange
of lines in varying syllabic lengths. The first stanza is particularly
founded on a principle of surprising recurrences of rhymes, partic-
ularly the delayed D and E rhymes mixed with quicker returns of
other rhymes. Obviously, for the first stanza she had something like
a sonnet in mind, in particular what we think of as the English son-
net, which contains seven rhymes. The shorter second stanza shows
Robinson constructing for extreme variation in line length. Many of
the other odes display similar technical complexities. For each stanza
of her irregular odes, Robinson seeks to construct a pattern of meter
and rhyme that is formally unlike any of the other stanzas. Each sec-
tion of one of these odes is meant to have a music of its own. In
this way, Robinson’s odes tend to be heterostrophic, rather than the
homostrophic ode on the Horatian model in which each stanza is the
same form, identical in rhyme scheme, number of lines, and metri-
cal pattern. Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and the most famous
of Keats’s odes are homostrophic, while Wordsworth’s “Intimations”
ode, like most of Robinson’s, is heterostrophic. Except for some of
the comic odes of Peter Pindar that come close, Robinson’s odes
have greater formal variety stanza-by-stanza than any other odes I
have been able to locate in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Robinson’s irregular odes display such formal complexity they are
almost anti-doggerel. In other words, she is showing off her skills.
It was necessary for Robinson to demonstrate her technical virtu-
osity as an essential feature of eighteenth-century lyric performance,
which, before the sonnet revival (see chapter three), was primarily
restricted to the ode or to the elegiac (heroic) quatrain. In the essay
on Collins’s poetry cited earlier, Barbauld goes on to explain that an
“Ode, like a delicate piece of silver filligree [sic], receives in a manner
all its value from the art and curiosity of the workmanship” (v). As
Barbauld recognizes, an ode requires exquisite ornamentation. The
mid-century experiments in classical poetic practice regarding the reg-
ular and irregular ode, evident in the poetry of Collins, Gray, Joseph
Warton, and others, made readers of poetry particularly sensitive to
stylistic features as a consideration distinct from the substance of a
80 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poem. Poetry became, for a time, hyperlyrical thanks to the irregu-


lar ode, and thus the subsequent appeal later in the period of a fixed
form such as the sonnet. This hyperlyricism is due to the example
of Abraham Cowley’s irregular “Pindaric” odes from the previous
century. Cowley adapted Pindar’s heterostrophic stanzas for English.
Considered by Dryden to be a major innovation, Cowley’s odes gave
license to poets who went on to practice what Norman Maclean calls
“ ‘the free verse’ of the neoclassical period” (424).9 Naturally, a debate
ensued over, among other things, stanzaic regularity, metrical varia-
tion, and the legitimacy of odes that do not follow the classical strophe-
antistrophe-epode formula. Classically educated readers and writers
objected to the increasing disregard for fixed form. In his edition of
Thomas Gray’s works, William Mason reiterated the adage “easy writ-
ing is no easy reading” to assert the value of the “extreme difficulty”
in the legitimate, regular ode (3: 156–7). Mason points out that the
irregular ode is “so extremely easy, that it gives the writer an opening
to every kind of poetical licentiousness” (1: 137). Gray’s “Ode for
Music,” Mason points out, is the only irregular ode Gray wrote, add-
ing that “its being written occasionally, and for music, is a sufficient
apology for the defect” (1: 136). This likely speaks to the irregular
quality of Robinson’s irregular odes as well; she may have imagined
melodies or rhythms for each of her variegated stanzas. Other simi-
larly legitimate poets, such as Collins or Akenside, earn the occasional
irregular ode by demonstrating their ability to write regular ones: the
odes of both Collins and Akenside include pieces that are demonstra-
bly regular, either through established stanza forms or through the
strophe-antistrophe-epode pattern, often with stanzas clearly labeled
as such that justify the apparent stanzaic variations. Like legitimate
sonneteers, as we shall see, legitimate odists are an elite group.
When Merry entered the scene as Della Crusca, his practice invited
comparisons to Cowley’s because of his interest in varied line lengths,
stanzaic experimentation, and metrical effects, which his critics com-
plained subordinated sense to sound. In his preface to Diversity, Merry,
as Della Crusca, contradicts Mason, asserting that he has found “the
irregular ode to have been susceptible of the greatest beauties, and
to have been employed with peculiar success by the best writers in
the best languages” (viii). A long unclassifiable poem itself, Diversity
partakes of this influence and gives Merry an opportunity to show-
case his metrical variety.10 Similarly, in revising “Lines on Beauty” as
“Ode to Beauty” for her 1791 volume, Robinson clearly wanted to
embellish the poem formally, expanding it from twenty-four to sixty-
four lines and extending the parade of allegorical figures (1: 99–100).
In so doing, she edits out the shift to the subjective lyric perspective
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 81

that makes the original poem so striking. The revised version devel-
ops the allegory, in addition to performing a greater metrical versa-
tility, and is perhaps more elegant—at least according to Robinson’s
standards of taste.
For Bell and for his readers, Robinson’s taste was refined enough.
Robinson’s first published sonnet appeared in the Oracle on 29 July
1789 (1: 62). And in his editorial headnote, Bell himself makes the
first association between Robinson/Laura Maria and Sappho—two
years before the Monthly Review proclaimed Robinson “the English
Sappho”:

We are happy to introduce to Public View any Specimen of Classic


Elegance, however short.—A Fragment of SAPPHO is dearer to the
Reader of real Taste, than a whole Epic Poem that reaches not beyond
Mediocrity. The following little Sonnet RELISHES of the true Attic
Taste; it breathes the tender Strain of SAPPHO, with the soft pathetic
Melancholy of COLLINS.

The point is the continued assertion of the paper’s good taste and of
Laura Maria’s refinement, the product of which—the sonnet begin-
ning “Night’s dewy orb”—might correspondingly have produced in
readers an appreciative sigh before they passed on in the column to
read news of a “GR AND CRICKET MATCH.”

Laurels and Laureates


As Bell’s laureate, Robinson clearly tried to distinguish herself from
the poetically inebriate crowd of poets that formed the Della Crusca
network, but she did not mean to distance herself from the Della
Crusca avatar or from Robert Merry himself. Merry, although still
friendly with Topham, maintained a business relationship with Bell,
who continued to publish the poet’s work. Although Merry went back
to the World to help Topham with political coverage of the 1790 elec-
tions, he was not dependable and found writing for a Ministry paper
disaffecting; he joined the Morning Post in early 1791 (Werkmeister,
London 207). At the same time Merry continued to contribute poetry
for Bell at the Oracle, but this time as “Rinaldo.” Merry, Cowley,
and Robinson briefly revived their poetic love triangle, attempting to
recapture at the Oracle the spirit of the Della Crusca network. Cowley
was the author of the corresponding “Armida” poems, playing again
the jealous harpy. Although the original publication in the Oracle is
lost, Robinson’s “To Rinaldo” was reprinted in her 1791 volume and
praises Rinaldo in similar terms to those applied to Della Crusca. It
82 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

even concludes with a quotation—“ ‘If I e’er could Please – I please no


more’ ” (1: 120; 106)—from Della Crusca’s poem to Anna Matilda,
beginning “In vain I fly thee.” Robinson’s poem “To the Muse of
Poetry” (1: 120–3) responds to Armida and includes the “weedy
waste” from the final Anna Matilda poem to Della Crusca, thus wink-
ing at Cowley’s authorship of the Armida poems. These avatars allude
to Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (1581), as well as to Sacchini’s
opera Armida (1772), which was performed at the Pantheon Opera
House in Haymarket at the time these poems appeared. Although
similarly ludic, these operatic avatars are obviously designed for Bell’s
Oracle to distinguish them from the more erotic and less refined play
of the Della Crusca network. Robinson, for instance, asks the Muse of
Poetry to bless Rinaldo’s “TRUE POETIC Mind” with her “chaste celes-
tial ray” (1: 122; 100–1). And she warns Rinaldo to ensure that his
“varying FANCY” never will “tread / The paths of vitiated Taste” (1:
123; 110–11). Maintaining good taste will ensure his fame, Robinson
insists, while abandoning it will consign him to oblivion. In terms
of taste, Bell obviously wanted to replay the sensation of 1788–9 in
the World but in the more refined Oracle; no correspondence, how-
ever, caught fire as the previous one had done, perhaps because these
later iterations were less amusing. During 1790 and 1791, other poets
using such avatars as Ignotus (William Kendall) and Cesario (Miss
M. Vaughan) continued to correspond with Robinson’s Laura avatar
instead of her Laura Maria one.11 Robinson’s 1791 volume includes
her responses. Because the issues of the Oracle during this time have
been lost, however, it is difficult to determine if Robinson signed any
of these poems as Laura; if so, she seems to have drawn a distinction
between the two avatars: she revives Laura as the erotic correspondent,
while Laura Maria maintains a somewhat aloof position above such
poetic exchanges. This reading is further confirmed by Robinson’s
exchanges in the Oracle of 1792 and 1793 with Arno, the avatar of
the paper’s editor, playwright James Boaden. In these exchanges, she
writes as Laura or as Julia, but they are decidedly more platonic. Even
as Laura, Robinson studiously avoids an erotic exchange as overheated
as that between Della Crusca and Anna Matilda. As Julia, for instance,
Robinson responds to Carlos, rejecting “FICKLE L OVE” and offering
only “Meek FRIENDSHIP,” which “Phoenix-like, shall rise, / Amidst
the flame, where PASSION DIES” (1: 179–80; 38, 59–60). Because her
identity was known, and the “Perdita” epithet was still in currency, she
wanted to preclude any whiff of sex, however poetic.
Robinson reserved Laura Maria’s correspondence for Merry alone.
Her first book with Bell, Ainsi va le monde, appeared in November
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 83

1790 dedicated by Laura Maria to Robert Merry, not to Della


Crusca. It followed within days Merry’s first volume after dropping
the Della Crusca avatar—The Laurel of Liberty. Both poems celebrate
the French Revolution and confirm that Robinson and Merry shared
political views as well as literary tastes. The baroque formal elegance,
such as that displayed by Robinson and Merry, eventually would
prove incongruous with their political views and associated poetical
ambitions as the course of the French Revolution became increas-
ingly controversial. The lovely pouffy world of West End elegance,
as well as the stability of the Whig social and political network, the
two being always interrelated, both were disrupted by the pamphlet
wars instigated by Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and
incessant subsequent debate regarding the Revolution.
As Robinson continued to cultivate her Laura Maria avatar, Merry
was trying to wriggle free of his. Della Crusca was good for a laugh
and a paycheck, but Merry was embarrassed at being forever associ-
ated with the name. Events in France made him especially eager to
shed the association. An ardent republican, Merry went to France
in the late summer and autumn of 1789 to observe the Revolution
first-hand. During 1790, Robinson continued to write poetry for Bell
in the Oracle with an eye toward the publication of her first vol-
ume of collected poems since 1777. On 26 July 1790, the Gazetteer
and New Daily Advertiser, edited at the time by Fox supporter James
Perry, reported that “the attention of the gay and fashionable world
will soon be solicited to two volumes of Poems by Mrs. Robinson,
which she is preparing incontinently for the press.” If this item was
not planted by Robinson herself, her assiduous networking and build-
ing up a list of subscribers for the volume likely alerted Perry to her
literary activities and forthcoming publication. Meanwhile, Merry
came back to England, favorably impressed by the first few months
of the Revolution. In need of work, he turned to his friend Topham
at the World, as spurious Della Cruscas and imitators continued to
proliferate in the press. But the authentic Della Crusca did make a few
public appearances. The death of philanthropist and prison reformer
Howard prompted a “Monody. To the Memory of John Howard,
Esq.” which was recited at Covent Garden and reprinted the follow-
ing day in the World (19 May 1790) as the work of Della Crusca. It
forms a companion piece to Della Crusca’s previous ode on “Howard,
the Phil-Anthrope” from the World during the height of its popular-
ity (30 October 1787), although, as noted earlier, these pieces created
complications for Merry as he sought to shed Della Crusca: his ambi-
tions had developed beyond what his avatar made possible.
84 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

These may have included holding the post of Poet Laureate. When
Thomas Warton died in May, the General Evening Post reported that
“It is generally supposed that he will have no successor in the office
of Laureat [sic]” (25 May 1790).This occasioned a debate in the press
about whether or not the position ought to be filled. The English
Chronicle recommended its abolishment, decrying it as “an office which
is of no use whatever, and never fails to be disreputable to the person
who fills it” (8 June 1790). Nonetheless, Topham began an outra-
geous and likely facetious campaign of puffing Merry as a contender to
replace Warton. The notion of Della Crusca as Poet Laureate was ridic-
ulous. On 24 May, just days after Warton’s death, Topham suggested,
“On the present vacancy of Poet-Laureatship, if Poetry has charms of
recommendation – why is not Mr. Merry entreated to accept it?” Perry
at the Gazetteer puffed Robinson’s pseudonym by poking fun at the
position and at Della Crusca’s poetry, as well as his supposed nomina-
tion: “Laura Maria does not mean to enter the lists as a candidate for
the Poet Laureateship; her poetry has too much plain sense, and too
little of the obscure sublime, for such a situation” (27 May 1790). On
July 22, the appointment of Henry James Pye as Poet Laureate was
announced in the papers; on the 28th it was official. The next day, a
correspondent in the World suggested that Merry had refused the offer:
“it were to be wished Mr. Merry had accepted the honour, as joining
to a fine genius, a most excellent heart” (29 July 1790). But would
Merry—who was about to celebrate the French Revolution in his most
ambitious poem, The Laurel of Liberty, and who would join the Society
of the Friends of the People and would begin to associate himself with
radicals—really have wanted to write a patriotic New Year’s ode and an
obsequious poem for the King’s birthday every year? I find it preposter-
ous, moreover, that Merry could have been so naive as to even think
he had a shot at it. Pye’s appointment was simply a reward for having
firmly supported Pitt in the House of Commons for six years; failing to
be re-elected, Pye was broke, so he got the job. The Gazetteer mocked
the appointment by joking that the government kept “the office for the
sake of some poor poet” (28 July 1790).
The laurel in which Merry was actually interested is the one he writes
about in his poem celebrating the French Revolution. The story of
Merry’s quest for the laureateship is another part of the Della Cruscan
lore that serves only to make him look foolish and to denigrate his
political convictions. In his book, Hargreaves-Mawdsley, again follow-
ing Reynolds’ account, gives the false impression that Merry had kept
The Laurel of Liberty from the public in the hope of securing the lau-
reateship and contends that, losing “the prize,” Merry “had nothing
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 85

to lose” and “hurried to John Bell” to publish “at once” his poem
on freedom and democracy (207). While it is conceivable that Merry
began writing the poem upon his return from France or on the first
anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, the facts of the matter are
that Pye was appointed in July and that Bell published Merry’s poem
in November, within days of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in
France. The November publication was significant as coinciding with
the anniversary of the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1788, the cente-
nary of which prompted Reverend Richard Price’s sermon A Discourse
on the Love of Our Country, to which Burke responds. Burke’s pam-
phlet had been anticipated for months. On 3 November, the World
announced that Merry’s new poem “is said to be a counterpart to Mr.
Burke’s Pamphlet; and in its principles, to be purely democratical.” The
Laurel of Liberty was for sale by the end of the first week of November.
Moreover, Merry directly addresses Burke as “lib’ral BURKE” and
“manly MORALIST,” asserting that the statesman ought not to be sur-
prised “to see / Revenge lead on the steps of Liberty” (32, 33). Merry
asks rhetorically, “Could men yet smarting with the tyrant’s stroke, /
Forgive the tribe that bow’d them to the yoke” (32)? “Tribe” is, of
course, a pejorative metaphor for “class,” Merry’s main subject. Praising
eighteenth-century philosophers, presumably among them Locke and
Rousseau, for their “Wisdom,” Merry presents a thesis that reflects the
natural law and social contract elements of the French Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen and anticipates Paine’s doctrine of equality:

The drop of Wisdom sent from heav’n to earth,


Shall nourish bliss and virtue, into birth,
Till like a flood th’ encreasing tide shall spread,
Refresh the vale, and cheer the mountain’s head;
By due degrees o’er all the globe shall roll,
Revive the heart, and fertilize the soul,
Make pure the human character, and give
A joy, a purpose, and a sense to live:
Shall teach the world, in prejudice’s scorn,
That born a Man is to be nobly born! (11)

Like Paine, but unlike Locke, Merry asserts the nobility of each indi-
vidual in the equal enfranchisement of the universal rights of man.
Not all of the poetry in The Laurel of Liberty is as direct or as free of
artificial poetic diction as the above passage. Critics censured much
of Merry’s imagery and phrasing, but none seriously complained of
its political import. The English Review, for example, charged Merry
86 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

with mindless enthusiasm and foolhardy idealism (26), but this


review came eighteen months after the publication of the poem. A
more timely review, from the Monthly Review in January of 1791,
also applauds Merry for his own “liberality” in his address to Burke,
“for the candor, generosity, and delicacy with which he appeals to
the heart of that celebrated writer, against the extreme severity of
his pen!” (57, 62). This remark reflects the initial opinion of many
that Burke’s Reflections was a bit hysterical in its condemnation of
the French Revolution and its reactionary defense of chivalry, primo-
geniture, and the English constitution. Merry’s poem is the earliest
published response to Burke, though few have recognized it as such.12
Wollstonecraft’s reply to Burke, A Vindication of the Rights of Men,
appeared in print on 29 November, three weeks after Merry’s.
Merry’s The Laurel of Liberty was in a second edition by December—
not as impressive as the eleven editions of Burke’s Reflections. In
January 1791, the Critical Review, for example, reviewed Merry’s
and Robinson’s poems alongside Joseph Priestley’s Letters to Edmund
Burke, censuring in Merry only the hyperbole of his enthusiasm
and the extravagance of his language. Merry’s poem is likely also a
response to Daniel Deacon’s “The Triumph of Liberty,” written to
celebrate the centenary of the Glorious Revolution. In his preface,
Merry denounces such complacency as the sentiments of those who
“are so charmed by apparent commercial prosperity, that they could
view with happy indifference the encroachments of insidious power,
and the gradual decay of the Constitution” (v). Merry’s Laurel of
Liberty is a clear dismissal of the Della Crusca avatar in his rejection
of love’s “extacy divine” and the assertion that “a still nobler, grander
theme inspires, / And Love is lost in Reason’s purer fires” (9).
Robinson’s tribute to Merry, Ainsi va le monde, appeared within
days of his poem, quickly selling into a second edition. Robinson,
recognizing a kindred spirit in Merry, wrote her poem to help him
disconnect from the Della Crusca avatar. He could not make this
move as the partly ludicrous Della Crusca and does not mention the
avatar—likely to the chagrin of Bell, who would have liked to have
had the pseudonym at least printed on the title page. When Robinson
pays tribute to Merry, however, she does so as Laura Maria, the name
on her title page. In his fervor, Merry awards his poetic laurel to
France and loses it; Robinson wants it for herself.

Ainsi va le monde
Ainsi va le monde, a Poem is Robinson’s first truly ambitious work,
her first book publication since her juvenile writings over a decade
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 87

earlier, and her first foray into the British debate over the French
Revolution. According to her Memoirs, Merry sent Robinson a copy
of The Laurel of Liberty on a Saturday; by Tuesday, Robinson’s Ainsi
va le monde, dedicated to Merry, was at press (7: 279). The composi-
tion, publication, and reception of the poem, then, is something of
a watershed event in Robinson’s career, proving that she could suc-
cessfully reinvent herself as a poet and as a political writer. Within a
month, the true identity of Laura Maria was known, and Robinson
likely braced herself for the return of the Perdita epithet. It came from
the General Magazine and Impartial Review, who neglected to men-
tion Robinson by name but attributed the poem to “the pen of the
celebrated Perdita” instead. The review was kind, however, character-
izing the poem as having “very refined sensibility, connected with
considerable richness of fancy, and correctness of taste” (548). The
review makes only an oblique reference to her scandalous past while
praising Robinson’s “naturally generous mind, which, pity is it, a pass-
ing cloud should ever have shadowed” (548). Significantly, this is the
only time the “Perdita” epithet would appear in periodical reviews of
Robinson’s poetry during her lifetime. The Critical Review, more-
over, recognized the poem as a bid for her own poetic preeminence,
pointing out that, although she supposes the laurel “will be conferred
on her, in consequence of her celebrating Mr. Merry’s patriotic ardor
and poetic genius, we think she is entitled to, and will obtain praise
from a much more honourable cause, her own merit” (74). Town and
Country Magazine similarly recognized that, in her tribute to Merry,
Robinson “under-rates her merits, if she supposes Mr. Merry is her
superior in the art of poetry” (72). Robinson’s formal choices are fun-
damentally competitive, and her tribute to Merry, while not altogether
disingenuous, is also a cunning assertion of her poetic talents.
Robinson’s tribute to Merry was also a temporary baffle for her
inevitable publicity. Ainsi va le monde is more about her poetry than
Merry’s, although it is closely bound to his. As Merry had done,
Robinson adopts the form appropriate for lofty poetical discourse—
the heroic couplet. Echoes of Pope, not heard in Merry’s poem, rever-
berate throughout Robinson’s as part of her own claim to poetic
legitimacy. At 340 lines, Robinson’s poem is almost exactly half the
length of The Laurel of Liberty, a fact that likely accounts for its more
favorable reception. More so than Merry, Robinson chooses to make
her poem as much about poetry as politics, making an explicit connec-
tion between social and political liberty and intellectual freedom. Like
Price, although far more subtly, Robinson suggests that, since 1688,
the “progress of Liberty”—a phrase she will employ again later for her
long, blank-verse poem—may have slowed after 100 years, and that
88 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

France must guide England toward its renewal. Her title suggests with-
out saying it that “As France goes, so goes the world.” Obviously, the
use of French makes the point stronger. She opens by praising Merry
as a poet “Whose pen gives polish to the varying line / That blends
instruction with the song divine” (3–4). Merry and his associates fre-
quently were criticized for their stylistic extravagance, but Robinson’s
praise of Merry here asserts that what makes him a great poet is his
attention to both style and substance. She alludes to his 1787 antiwar
poem “Elegy Written on the Plain of Fontenoy,” published as Della
Crusca, praising his “fancy” for its ability to recognize the sacrifices
of those who die for their country—“the mighty slain” (1: 77; 6). She
also recalls imagery from Della Crusca’s Diversity (1789), praising the
poet’s ability to sing of happier subjects, “Blithe as the songstress of
returning day,” like the lark, as well as melancholy ones: his “liquid
notes in sweet meand’rings flow, / Mild as the murmurs of the Bird of
Woe,” the nightingale (8, 12). Her invocation and address concludes
with a reference to The Florence Miscellany: Merry, “in Italia’s groves,
with thrilling song, / Call’d mute attention from the minstrel throng”
(15–6); he thereby earned the coveted poetic laurel and “Gave proud
distinction to the Poet’s name, / And claim’d, by modest worth, the
wreath of fame” (17–8). Robinson recognizes Merry’s status as her
laureate, awarding him “the wreath of fame”—that ubiquitous phrase
in Robinson’s poetry appears first here at Merry’s coronation.
Part of Robinson’s program here is unequivocally to assert Merry’s
authority without discounting his previous work. Her tribute con-
tinues in the next verse paragraph by making it clear that Merry’s
poetic virtue is his formal versatility. His “Sacred Lyre” can “more
than mortal thoughts inspire” through the poet’s ability to modulate
between “HEROIC measures,” such as those of The Laurel of Liberty,
and “lyric numbers,” as in his love poetry (1: 78; 21–4). Robinson,
however, refrains from mentioning Della Crusca anywhere in the
poem. Moreover, Robinson echoes Pope’s praise of Dryden, in his
“First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated,” for modern-
izing English poetic meter but applies Pope’s phrase “varying verse”
to Merry’s poetic imagination (25). Robinson asserts that Merry’s
poetry bears the imprints of both “nature” and “Genius,” while “still
the verse is thine” (29–30). These are canny gestures on Robinson’s
part because her own unmasking is at hand: the key to Robinson’s use
of avatars is, as I have asserted, in the figurative refraction, even the
multiplication, of the poet’s actual self.
Robinson’s praise of Merry, however, leads to a critique of con-
temporary English culture that dominates the first half of the poem,
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 89

before France is even mentioned. Ainsi va le monde is a manifesto of


taste as much as it is of poetic aspiration and acclamation. Robinson,
as Laura Maria, laments the absence of Shakespeare and Milton,
while potentially great young writers such as Thomas Chatterton and
Thomas Otway (also celebrated by Charlotte Smith) have suffered
from neglect during their brief lives. Unintentionally ironic perhaps,
Robinson dismisses contemporary poetry in the figure of “a flutt’ring
form” who has replaced the English Muse and who is nothing more
than a “flippant, senseless, aery thing” (45, 47). Many critics would
have agreed with her, and some even warned her of following too
closely in Merry’s footsteps. Shortly after the publication of these two
poems—not so much before—Della Crusca became synonymous with
bad taste. Reviewing her 1791 volume, the English Review recognized
her affinities with “the new school of poets,” those associated with or
imitative of Della Crusca who filled the newspapers: “We are suffo-
cated by the sweets of these poets, and dazzled by the glare of their tin-
sel. . . . Mrs. Robinson must beware this species of fascination” (42–3).
Much of Ainsi va le monde, indeed, concerns taste. Echoing Pope’s
Essay on Criticism, Robinson condemns the shallow literary produc-
tions of her day and the “vitiated taste” of the public (58): “True Wit
recedes, when blushing Reason views / This spurious offspring of the
banish’d Muse” (51–2). Robinson calls for the poetic to inspire a con-
temporary English poet—possibly Merry or more likely herself—to do
for her country’s literature what she believes Sir Joshua Reynolds has
done for English art. Incorporating her shorter poem “To Sir Joshua
Reynolds” into this longer one, she makes it clear that Reynolds’
genius surveys not only “the dimpled smile on Beauty’s face” but also
“the statesman’s thought,” “the matron’s eye serene,” and “the poet’s
fire” (1: 79; 84–8). Having been painted by Reynolds at least twice
and intending to reveal her identity, Robinson implicitly reminds the
public that all of these characteristics combine in the image of herself.
Reynolds’ “polish’d pencil’s touch divine,” like Merry’s, will ensure
his fame and that of those he paints (such as herself) (90).
Robinson’s rumination on Reynolds leads her to an epistemologi-
cal exploration of poetic inspiration and composition. The genius of
such creative artists as Merry, Reynolds, and herself is activated by
the imagination’s compact with reason. Robinson describes how “the
mind, with sickening pangs oppress’d, / Flies to the Muse” only to
find Reason, “a blest repose” (95–6, 98). This compact, she asserts,
leads to “calm reflection” that “shuns the sordid crowd, / The sense-
less chaos of the little proud” (103–4), an aesthetic of isolated poetic
contemplation that conjures the great poets from the past, Shakespeare
90 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

and Milton preeminently, but also working circuitously through “the


sacred few, / Pope, Dryden, Spenser, all that Fame shall raise, / From
Chaucer’s gloom—till Merry’s lucid days” (1: 80; 123–5). Robinson
adds, “Then emulation kindles fancy’s fire, / The glorious throng
poetic flights inspire” (126–7). This allegory of the poet’s calling
pertains only to “the lib’ral few” (136), those open-minded enough
to receive such inspiration, turning again to Merry whose “transcen-
dent fire” (163) has inspired her own muse.
The poetic muse is exclusive obviously to those who can appreciate
genius; so, having established this, the poem turns to a more egalitar-
ian muse, “Celestial Freedom” (1: 81; 165). In lines 164–91, Robinson
develops an allegory of epistemology in which the enlightened, liber-
ated mind can come to no other conclusion than the superiority of
freedom over any other claim. “ ’Tis god-like Freedom,” she writes,
“bids each passion live, / That truth may boast, or patriot virtue give”
(178–9). This freedom is essential, for it “Gives strength to Reason,”
justifying an egalitarian spirit that “Strangles each tyrant phantom in
its birth” (187, 190). Here, she semantically disconnects the rhyming
pair for rhetorical effect: this kind of “birth”—hereditary power—is
no equal to the “superior worth” of freedom and equality that “knows
no title” (191). In a long section of the poem, after having espoused
this principle, Robinson surveys French history since Louis XIV to
show the progress of “Enlighten’d Gallia” (1: 81–3; 192–275). This
survey culminates in the inevitable figure of French tyranny and a
remarkable conflation of Spenserian and Dantean allegorical tropes:
“Thy Tyrants, Gallia, nurs’d the witch Despair, / Where in her black
Bastile [sic] the harpy fed / On the warm crimson drops her fangs
had shed” (237–9). Amid this extravagant personification, however,
Robinson does not shy away from using the Revolutionaries’ phrase
that, in English, would become a touchstone for radical thought for
the rest of the decade: the Bastille commemorates “the hour / That
gave the rights of man to rav’nous pow’r” (258–9). Robinson goes
on to praise the French Third Estate as “the favour’d delegates of
Heav’n” (276) and, echoing Price, asks bluntly, “Who shall the nat’ral
Rights of Man deride, / When Freedom spreads her fost’ring banners
wide?” (298–9). It is this concept of natural rights that Burke calls
into question so rigorously in his Reflections.
At a time when many Britons assumed the French Revolution
would resolve itself as a constitutional monarchy on the English
model, which is what Fox, for example, assumed would happen,
Robinson and Merry were pushing the debate further by heralding
the more progressive examples of the recently ratified American
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 91

and the developing French constitutions. Robinson’s Ainsi va le


monde, then, is an important document in the British debate over
the French Revolution and is one of the few immediate poetic
responses to be published. The next year Robinson included Ainsi
va le monde in her collection of Poems, printed by Bell. She would
continue to engage the French Revolution, its principles, and its
ultimately unfortunate course throughout the decade. Robinson
also would continue to associate with Merry until his departure
with his actress wife, Ann Brunton, for America in 1796. Despite
the posthumous disavowal of the Memoirs, Robinson and Merry
shared a taste for poetry that coincided with their shared politi-
cal views, and the Della Crusca network eventually evolved (some
would say devolved) into a network of disenfranchised radicals.
As I noted in the previous chapter, Merry introduced Godwin
to Robinson, founding an important friendship for Robinson in
her final years (Paul 1: 154). Significantly, in Maria Elizabeth’s
edition of Robinson’s Poetical Works in 1806, Ainsi va le monde
appears in the canon of Robinson’s poetry; all references to Merry,
however, have been deleted or effaced from the poem. Whether it
was Robinson or her daughter who made these changes is impos-
sible to determine, but I suspect it was not Robinson herself,
especially given the embarrassed acknowledgment of her Della
Cruscan sympathies in the section of the Memoirs continued “by
a friend.” Furthermore, after the debacle of Godwin’s memoir of
Wollstonecraft, the author(s) of Robinson’s Memoirs is careful
to elide Robinson’s friendship with radicals such as Wolcot and
Godwin as well, the only two mourners at her funeral.

Bell’s Whole Choir


When Great Britain and France went to war, Merry and his associates
eventually became the target of vicious political attacks masked as liter-
ary ones, such as William Gifford’s Baviad in 1791. The destruction of
Della Crusca began as a systematic program of incessant ridicule almost
immediately after The Laurel of Liberty and Ainsi va le monde appeared.
The ridicule of Della Crusca and Laura Maria began playfully enough:
the Town and Country Magazine joked that “This rhyming couple seem
so exactly on a par that an union of pens, if not of hands, could not
be disreputable to either” (72). The tone from some quarters became
gradually harsher as it became known that Robinson was the author
of the Laura Maria poems. Perhaps in response to the suggestion of a
union between the two poets, the Morning Post snidely and knowingly
92 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

remarked, “The Platonics of Della Crusca and Laura Maria have been
vilely slandered. Their extacies have been purely poetical, rhapsodical,
and hyperbolical. The Lady’s situation admits of nothing farther!” (4
April 1791). Robinson’s “situation,” ostensibly her married status, is
probably also a crude reference to her paralysis below the waist. Just a
month after the publication of the two poems, even the World, having
lost both Merry and Robinson to Bell, began mocking Della Crusca
and Laura Maria with a series of satirical exchanges between “Terræ-
Filius” and “Lex Talionis” on the comparable merits of the two poets.
Terræ-Filius praises Della Crusca (in the past tense) but complains of
“a curs’d tribe” of female offspring: “Your AURAS, / And L AURAS, /
M ARIAS, SOPHIAS”—who “fairly have made me of POETRY sick”; he
concludes, “So still, DELLA CRUSCA, may Fame be THY meed!— / For
the PARENT I love—tho’ a p-x on his BREED!” (7 December 1790).
Matching his opponent’s verse form precisely, Lex Talionis retorts that
“L AURA M ARIA, with fancy and feeling, / By Verse claims the Laurel
A POLLO bestows” but is herself beset by “impotent” imitators who
“From the store of her genius are picking and stealing” (9 December
1790). This is, of course, all an elaborate set up for Terræ-Filius’ ulti-
mate punchline: Smirking obliquely at Robinson’s previous celebrity, at
her heyday of celebrated fashions and ostentatious carriages, and at the
numerous amorous poems addressed to her, Terræ-Filius responds that
Laura is a “dizen’d-out Dame” who seduces young poets and teaches
them to steal for her; the whole exchange leads to this punning conclu-
sion: Laura, who in the eyes of this poet is a mask for Perdita,

sweeps to her coach ’mongst a pickpocket rabble,


And tempts the poor rogues above what they are able.
Thus, BARD, your sweet L AUR A sill keeps up this fun—
For here’s Robbing-Mother, and there’s Robbing-Son. (15 December
1790)

Get it? Terræ-Filius has worked awfully hard to get to this lame rev-
elation of Laura’s identity. Through the winter and into the spring,
the World continued to mock Della Crusca and Laura as the new
poetical couple. One “Barbara Bickerstaff” contributed to the paper
an amusing parody “On the Death of a Fly, Drowned in a Bowl of
Cream,” which is “Humbly Inscribed to Laura Maria, Della Crusca,
Rinaldo, Petrarch, &c” (7 February 1791). The same writer contin-
ued the assault in “To Laura Maria” (23 February 1791) but also
directed the satire, predictably, to the Oracle, mocking the critical
pretensions of editor Boaden and publisher Bell—“the tuneful Critics
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 93

who in taste excel, / From tuneful A RNO down to Delphic BELL”—


and their “Oracular puffs.” A phony poetic response signed “Laura
Maria” appeared on 25 February 1791. Around this time, Topham
even had the nerve to publish two new volumes of The Poetry of the
World in 1791, one with an engraved fictional image of Laura Maria,
even though no poems under that signature appeared in the paper
(or in the volume). Before Gifford’s Baviad, Robinson, however,
remained relatively unscathed from her association with Merry, who
continued to publish under his own name, not as Della Crusca. On
21 April 1791, promoting her forthcoming volume, Bell announced
formally in the Oracle what readers had known for months: “Mrs.
ROBINSON’S exquisite Collection of Poems, will include those that
have appeared under the signature of Laura Maria.” What happened
to Merry did not happen to her.
Merry was committed to his new passion—France and the
Revolution—and to the effacement of Della Crusca. A month after
The Laurel of Liberty, his musical pantomime called The Picture of
Paris was staged at Covent Garden and published by Thomas Cadell.
Intent on being the laureate of the Revolution, Merry wrote Ode for
the Fourteenth of July, 1791, the Day Consecrated to Freedom, which Bell
timely published, with indirect repercussions to come over the next year
for his business. Composed for a musical setting, this poem is a bit more
subdued stylistically than The Laurel of Liberty but has no less enthusi-
asm for its cause. A year before Thomas Spence’s Pig’s Meat, or Lessons
for the Swinish Multitude, Merry, in his ode, scornfully quotes Burke’s
phrase “the swinish multitude,” and provides a Paineite chorus to be
sung: “Assert the hallow’d Rights which Nature gave, / And let your last,
best vow be FREEDOM OR THE GRAVE.” Although he stopped using the
avatar, Merry continued to be disparaged as Della Crusca, while Della
Cruscan became a codeword not just for bad poetry but also for Jacobin
sentiments. In November of 1792, just as Paine was about to go to trial
for libeling the English constitution and as Robespierre takes control of
the French National Convention, Della Crusca is associated with noto-
rious radicals and with dangerous revolutionary activity. The World, still
supported by the Treasury, unequivocally expressed its concern over the
arming of France and of the London Corresponding Society; the paper
identified specifically threatening individuals in an impressive and apt
metaphor: “When Carbine is loaded with Dr. Maxwell’s Pills, wadded
by Della Crusca and Holcroft, and primed by Parson Tooke, Paine’s
Nose only will be wanting to give fire” (29 November 1792).13 This
is an illustrious list of radicals. Of course Della Crusca seems to be the
ridiculous incongruity here. According to Boaden, Merry’s political
94 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

passion destroyed him: he “became perfectly rabid with the French


revolution; associated himself with the radical press, and spoke its furi-
ous and disgusting language.” Although the ignominy of Della Crusca
would outlive Merry, Boaden remarks that, as Merry began making
these unsavory associations, “the poet and the gentleman vanished
together” (284). Merry never published anything else as Della Crusca,
but the label stuck to him like tar and there were many happy to supply
the feathers.
The Baviad is the best example of how this came to be. Within only
one year, according to Horace Walpole, Merry had been “immortal-
ised, not by his verses, but by those of the ‘Baviad’ ” (391). But this is
not entirely accurate. To Gifford, Robert Merry is not even a person;
Della Crusca, rather, is a cynical commercial machination of Bell. As
Bostetter long ago observed, Gifford’s satire was politically motivated.
Gifford would go on to become the great Tory satirist and editor of
the Anti-Jacobin and later the Quarterly Review, having in the latter
capacity no small impact on the reception of the second-generation
Romantic writers. The attacks on Merry are easily achieved, although
most of the wit appears in the footnotes, where Gifford quotes cringe-
inducing passages to mount evidence. Gamer asserts that Gifford’s
anger derives, not so much from the original newspaper poetry, but
from Bell’s influence on popular culture (“Bell’s Poetics” 43–8).
Gifford represents Bell as a degraded taste-maker, crassly commercial
and responsible for denigrating literary culture with his pretentions.
To Gifford, Bell fueled the ambitions of unworthy poets by giving
them prominence in popular culture and profited by selling his wares
to an ignorant and susceptible public: these readers now “fancy ‘BELL’S
POETICS’ only sweet, / And intercept his hawkers in the street” (185–6).
Gifford’s malice toward Bell was unrelenting. In the second edition of
1793, Gifford added a spurious riposte from Bell, and in the sequel to
the Baviad, the Mæviad of 1795, Gifford inserted in his copious notes
a bogus sonnet purportedly by Bell in which the publisher hilariously
impugns Gifford as a “Monster of Turpitude!” (50).14 Laura Maria, as
one of “Bell’s whole choir” (8), is not exempt from the parody, appear-
ing extensively in footnoted assaults on Della Crusca where Gifford
mocks her hyperbolic praise of him. Gifford’s ridicule of Cowley’s cor-
respondence as Anna Matilda is funny: “See Cowley frisk it to one
ding-dong chime, / And weekly cuckold her poor spouse in rhyme”
(9). But Gifford’s ad hominem against Robinson herself is particu-
larly vicious: “See Robinson forget her state, and move / On crutches
tow’rds the grave, to ‘Light o’ Love’ ” (9). Not only does Gifford
mock Robinson’s disability, he also rudely implies via Shakespearean
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 95

allusion that it resulted from a miscarriage, an imputation now widely


regarded as truth. A footnote identifies the reference to Much Ado
about Nothing but emphasizes the pun on burden as refrain and as
pregnancy: “Light o’ love! that’s a tune that goes without a burden”
(8; Gifford’s emphasis). Gifford’s attacks had the unintended effect of
garnering sympathy for Robinson. Remarking on Gifford’s treatment
of women writers, a reviewer for the Monthly Review exclaimed, “Talk
of the severity of Reviewers! Compared with this, their cruelty is ten-
der mercy” (96). Gifford’s attacks may have stung Robinson, but they
did not hinder her career.

Laura Maria and the War


Unlike Merry, Robinson had no desire to abandon her avatar; instead,
she multiplied herself into several others. Her handsome first collec-
tion appeared in 1791 with well over 500 subscribers listed, chief
among them the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Robinson, the author, also
socialized within her network of avatars. Early in 1792, Bell pub-
lished her first novel, Vancenza; or, The Dangers of Credulity, which
achieved enough commercial success to warrant five editions. (Her
novels, incidentally, always appeared with her real name attached.)
In August of 1791, however, Bell published Robinson’s pamphlet
Impartial Reflections on the Present Situation of the Queen of France
signed only as “a Friend to Humanity”—a kind of avatar perhaps, but
certainly a disguise. Robinson was not as willing as Merry was to con-
tinue to publicize her political sentiments. Written in response to the
imprisonment of the French Royal Family after their attempt to flee
the country, Robinson’s pamphlet celebrates the French Revolution as
“the most glorious achievement in the annals of Europe” and asserts
from the beginning of the essay that “Man is a Commoner of Nature,
his soul is impregnated with the spirit of independence, and revolts
at the attacks of oppression” (8: 122). Robinson’s task is a difficult
one of having to maintain this position while also expressing sympa-
thy for Marie Antoinette and indignation at her humiliation, putting
her in an uneasy alliance with Burke’s Reflections. A reviewer for the
Monthly Review admitted that this “inconsistency” made it impos-
sible to understand the argument. But Robinson, as Amy Garnai con-
tends, acknowledges a “double sense of victimhood” in the Queen’s
position—victimized first by the system of aristocratic privilege in
which she was raised, and now by the vengeance of the Revolution
(85). Robinson defends the Queen’s flight as the prerogative of her
husband and thus as her corresponding wifely duty; she appeals to
96 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

sympathy in the hope that, regardless of politics, “every impartial


eye has a tear for her sufferings” and that justice—in the form of the
Queen’s release from prison—will prevail (128). According to Judith
Pascoe, Robinson presents Marie Antoinette “as first and foremost
a wronged woman and thus ignores her status as an avatar of aristo-
cratic frivolity” (53). Robinson, in this regard, would seem to have
little in common with Wollstonecraft, who despised Marie Antoinette
as a monarch and as a woman.15
Despite her previous affiliation with Merry, Robinson, during these
early years of the war when she was still doing business with Bell,
remains politically ambivalent at least in public. Moreover, despite
having written the pro-Revolution poem Ainsi va le monde in 1790,
by 27 November of 1793, nearly a year into the war, the Ministerial
True Briton, having been converted from the radical Argus into a tool
of Pitt’s government, hailed “Mrs. Robinson” “as the first Poet now
living.” This praise from a newspaper affiliated with newly elected
MP George Canning (by a rotten borough), the future founder and
primary writer of the ultra-conservative Anti-Jacobin, makes a stark
contrast with Gifford’s later comment on Robinson in the 1811 edi-
tion of The Baviad and Mæviad: “This wretched woman, indeed, in
the wane of her beauty fell into merited poverty, exchanged poetry for
politics, and wrote abusive trash against the government at the rate of
two guineas a week, for the Morning Post” (56n). The exchange of
“poetry for [radical] politics,” to use Gifford’s terms, would not take
place until after the end of Robinson’s relationship with Bell, and
her radicalism would become more public after her personal relation-
ship with Tarleton permanently dissolved early in 1797. But how does
Robinson go from praising the Revolution in 1790 and 1791 to being
celebrated by a Treasury-bought newspaper at the end of 1793?
The simplest answer is that Robinson’s friend John Taylor, who
had been oculist to the King, was one of the proprietors of the True
Briton and of the Sun, having “turned ultra-Tory at the beginning
of the French Revolution” (Adams, “Robert Merry” 32). That fall,
Robinson had dedicated to him her long poem Sight, her first in blank
verse. It was published by Evans as a slim volume with two other
poems, “The Cavern of Woe,” a Spenserian allegory, and “Solitude,”
also in blank verse. Taylor was a propagandist on the Treasury pay-
roll, as the ledgers indicate (Werkmeister, Newspaper 29–30). As a
government spy, Taylor also gave evidence against John Thelwall in
the government’s trial of him for treason (Barrell, Imagining 393).
Taylor, later, was also one of those, like Boaden and Reynolds, who
engaged in the destruction of Merry’s posthumous reputation, writing
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 97

that Merry “would most willingly have promoted the destruction


of the British government” if he could have profited from it (387).
Robinson’s poem to Taylor is ostensibly apolitical, its dedication refer-
ring to Taylor’s previous profession; but figuratively, the poem’s cel-
ebration of vision may have a subtext in light of Taylor’s affiliations.
As Adriana Craciun has noted, Robinson’s preface and dedication to
Taylor has a political resonance (Fatal 90); here, Robinson eschews
dedications as “too frequently calculated to feed the VANITY of H IGH
R ANK” but is happy, in this instance, to “pay voluntary homage to
the first of all distinctions,—the A RISTOCR ACY of GENIUS !” (1: 409)
This is obviously flattery, too, but she qualifies it to contrast with
hereditary worth as similarly elite, implying of course that she and
Taylor belong to it. The Sight volume was Robinson’s most widely
reviewed poetic publication; none of the reviewers found any political
allusions. And even the opposition Morning Post, from which Taylor
had been dismissed as editor in 1790, praised Robinson’s genius with
approbation of its dedication to Taylor (17 July 1793).
Robinson’s political ambivalence during this time worked to her
professional advantage. Still influenced by Sheridan, the Oracle,
however, was a constant nuisance to the government, despite its con-
tinued subsidies, and frequently was unreliable in its delivery of pro-
government propaganda. As Werkmeister puts it, Bell’s paper “caused
the Government more trouble than almost any one of the Opposition
newspapers”; its extortionary expertise, consisting of the supporting
or humiliating of certain individuals, was always for hire regardless
of party (Newspaper 23). Sheridan, moreover, became increasingly
involved in the Society for the Friends of the People, a group of Whig
reformers, not quite radicals. Rumors circulated in the papers that the
Prince disapproved of Sheridan’s political affiliations and that there had
been a falling out between them. The Prince was obligated to support
Pitt’s war with France, sanctioned as it was by his father; and in 1793,
the King gave him honorary command of the Tenth Regiment of Light
Dragoons, replacing Pitt who was promoted to the colonelcy of the
King’s Dragoon Guards. Delighted by the appointment, the Prince
immediately sat for his portrait in military uniform and frequently sta-
tioned his corps in Brighton, near where Robinson lived. At least until
the Prince’s second (but first legal) marriage, to Caroline of Brunswick
in 1795, Robinson would not overtly contradict the political alignment
of the Prince. But Robinson’s allegiances do begin to shift around
the middle of 1793, when Bell declares bankruptcy and when Lord
Lauderdale leased the Morning Post and employed Daniel Stuart to
manage it. Her tenure as Bell’s laureate was coming to an end.
98 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

The praise of Robinson in the True Briton and the sudden appear-
ance of support for her in the Morning Post, conducted by Stuart,
suggests that, in addition to having friends on both sides, Robinson
was being wooed by both sides. While associated with a ministerial
paper, the Oracle, Robinson’s poetry was in 1792 and 1793 generally
consistent with the views the Treasury was paying the newspapers to
proliferate. The pro-government newspapers reciprocated with puffs,
some of which Robinson may have paid for herself, as Gifford and
others suggested.16 It is possible, then, that Robinson herself supplied
some of the praises in the newspapers, although it also was customary
for the papers to puff their own contributors. Before the middle of
1793, except for a few snide remarks, none of the opposition papers
appears to have regarded Robinson at all as an important writer dur-
ing the first few years of her literary career. In July of 1793, the Post,
on the side of the opposition, however, suddenly began celebrating
Robinson’s literary achievements, around the time she, upon Bell’s
bankruptcy, became a free agent. By January of 1794, Robinson
was contributing to both the ministerial Oracle and the opposition
Morning Post; her second volume of Poems appeared that month, pub-
lished by Evans and Becket, not by Bell. Moreover, in January of
1794, Robinson retired Laura Maria. She would not use the avatar
again until July 1799.
The final stage of Robinson’s stint as Bell’s laureate is distinguished
by Robinson’s continued assertions of Laura Maria as an avatar of ide-
alized public virtue. After avowing the signature in the preface to her
1791 Poems, Robinson continued to use the avatar for poetry in the
Oracle. But the Laura Maria of Ainsi va le monde, in 1790, had to evolve
according to the developments in France. Robinson’s “Ode to Despair,”
which probably appeared in one of the missing issues of the Oracle in
1790 with the Laura Maria avatar, is one of the many irregular alle-
gorical odes in the 1791 Poems; it develops an allegory of Despair as
the associate of “the HUGE FIEND, DESPOTIC POW’R,” who resides in
the “loathsome cells” of the Bastille (1: 93; 33–54). Robinson’s depic-
tion of the fall of the Ancien Régime echoes Merry in its approbation
of revolutionary vengeance: under this system of oppression, Despair
prevailed

Till FREEDOM spurn’d the ignominious chain,


And roused from Superstition’s night,
Exulting Nature claim’d her right,
And call’d dire Vengeance from her dark domain. (51–4)
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 99

Two years later, however, after the September Massacres in Paris, Laura
Maria presents a very different perspective on events in France. On 20
September 1792, Robinson published in the Oracle a new ode, “Ode
to Humanity,” with the Laura Maria avatar. As the title suggests, the
poem is a paean to humane pacifism, but it opens in the patriotic
manner of a Laureate ode, celebrating a still-peaceful Britain on the
verge of war. Laura Maria praises her country’s “calm majestic pride,”
Britain’s “conqu’ring NAVIES,” and the supremacy of British “A RT and
COMMERCE” (1: 181; 5–7). Laura Maria calls for “blest Humanity” to
“Bathe with oblivious balm, the dread record, / Grav’d on the page
of Fame by Gallia’s vengeful sword!” (1: 182; 33, 43–4). Expressing
Laura Maria’s horror, the poem’s imagery is apocalyptic in its portrayal
of revolutionary Paris:

Where the tow’ring CITY stands,


Once a polish’d Nation’s pride,
See, stern DEATH, with rapid stride,
Leads on his grisly bands!
The Infant’s shriek, the Sire’s despair,
Rend the sulphur-stagnant air;
Nought illumes the direfulb shade,
Save the poignard’s glitt’ring blade;
All along the flinty way,
See the tepid River stray,
Foaming – blushing, as it flows,
While ev’ry Dome resounds with agonizing woes! (1: 183; 69–80)

Although similarly allegorical, “Ode to Humanity” is formally dif-


ferent from Robinson’s previous Laura Maria odes. Obviously, the
imagery is more literally terrific, but it is in some ways a disavowal
of her previous mode and its associations. Robinson constructs a
generally homostrophic ode, with some variations: the opening
and closing stanzas are both eight lines, and the six intervening
stanzas are each twelve lines, but all of the stanzas reveal varying
rhyme schemes and syllabic counts. The overall regularity allows
for Robinson to create a greater sense of chaos within the stanzaic
matrix. Every stanza, however, ends with an Alexandrine, thus giv-
ing each a roughly Spenserian quality. Robinson clearly is inter-
ested in establishing a formal regularity that she can then subvert
and finally disrupt. In addition, Robinson eschews the Franco-
formal syllabics she and Merry had practiced. Gifford likely had a
hand in this change; in the Baviad, he attacks the Della Cruscans
100 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

for their pretentious adoption of a popularized notion of Edward


Bysshe’s Art of Poetry (1701), which encouraged syllabic meters for
English poetry on the continental model and asserted that clas-
sical prosody, which scans long and short syllables, was faulty for
English composition.17 In the eyes (and ears) of classicists, such as
Gifford, this gave license to many poets and poetasters: as Gifford
writes, “Happy the soil where bards like mushrooms rise, / And
ask no culture but what Bysche [sic] supplies!” (177–8). In “Ode
to Humanity,” Robinson is engaged in the Anglophonic poetic
practice of counting stresses, resulting in many initially truncated
(acephalectic) lines with an almost trochaic feel. Although seven-
syllable lines frequently suggest syllabic verse, the inconsistent
interplay between seven- and eight-syllable lines in the poem, com-
bined with the regularity of four beats in each, tells me she is writ-
ing accentual verse. So, in the stanza graph that follows, I measure
the beats per line, but assume a generally iambic foot pattern, par-
ticularly in the longer lines:

1–8: abcaddc4b6
9–20: abbaccddeff4e6
21–32: aabccbddeef4f6
33–44: aabbccddeef 5f6
45–56: aabccbdedef 5f6
57–68: aabbccdedef 5f6
69–80: abbaccddeef4f6
81–88: aabbccd4d6

Clearly, one of Robinson’s formal principles is that each stanza must


be unique, while also giving the impression of general regularity. In
a less subtle way, the poem also renounces Merry’s Laurel of Liberty.
The laurel Merry celebrates reappears in “Ode to Humanity” in ever-
increasing states of moribundity, until finally Robinson shows that
France is “where the blood-stain’d Laurel dies” (1: 183; 87). Dated
17 September 1792, Robinson’s Laura Maria hopes that in its place
the “OLIVE” will “bloom” (88). In this way, the poem is peculiarly
also about fame and about infamy—British fame and French infamy.
Moreover, given the publicity of Laura Maria’s connection to Della
Crusca, the ode also is a kind of elegy for the English laureate of the
French Revolution—Merry.
Laura Maria does not make another appearance in the Oracle
until after the execution of Louis XVI, which took place on 21
January 1793. On 1 February, France declared war on the latest
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 101

members of the First Coalition, Great Britain and the Dutch


Republic. Laura Maria responds with a return to form—the
twelve-line stanza form she had used in “Ode to Humanity.” This
time, however, she identifies her poem as a “Fragment, Supposed
To Be Written near the Temple, on the Night before the Murder
of Louis the Sixteenth” (Oracle 27 February 1793). She continues
her experiment with a generally homostrophic poem, although,
again, with variations within each of the seven stanzas. Most of the
lines are again four beats (seven or eight syllables per line), with
frequent metrical substitutions (trochees for iambs, for example),
but most of the stanzas end with an iambic pentameter and iambic
hexameter rhyming couplet. The metrical variety mimics Laura
Maria’s disturbed imaging of an inconceivable and obscene—lit-
erally ob scena—horror. As the title indicates, Robinson’s view of
the event is unequivocal: The King’s execution is murder. And the
atmosphere in which it is perpetrated is one of appalling anticipa-
tion: “In dumb despair Creation seems to wait, / While Horror
stalks abroad to deal the shafts of Fate!” (1: 191; 11–2). Laura
Maria “supposes” herself outside the medieval fortress where Louis
XVI awaited his fate on the night before he was to be taken from
there to the guillotine. The poem is a “fragment” in the sense that
Robinson wants to portray the horror of the crime as a violation
of the imagination that is inconceivable and thus incomplete; the
poet’s “fancy” cannot envision the consummation of the crime.
Although most critics are more interested in Robinson’s Marie
Antoinette poems, her “Fragment” is compellingly impenetrable,
like the fortress itself. Robinson’s Laura Maria cannot completely
access the scene inside, only its circumstances, until morning
comes. She can geographically place the dauphin, Louis- Charles,
inside the Temple, where he is already “entombed” though still
alive, but can only envision the “Troops of PANDIMONIUM [sic]”
whose “desolating Ire” persecutes “the fairest Child of Earth” (1:
192; 26–30). In contrast to her later poem “Marie Antoinette’s
Lamentation,” Robinson makes no attempt here fully to subjectify
the horror of the night from the King’s perspective until the end
of the poem, but then only brief ly; most of the horror is reserved
for her reader. Instead, she describes the activities of allegorical
figures such as Ambition, Malice, Revenge, Suspicion, Fear—
all representing the French National Convention (38–42). The
Revolutionaries Laura Maria previously had celebrated in Ainsi va
le monde as “the favour’d delegates of Heav’n” have become “The
barb’rous Sons of A NARCHY” who “Drench their unnat’ral hands
102 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

in R EGAL blood” (1: 83; 276; 192; 46–7). Meanwhile, Robinson


recognizes the imminent fall of the Girondists: “Patriot VIRTUE
sinks beneath the whelming flood” (48).
Laura Maria only briefly imagines the consciousness of the King
himself. Poignantly, the King “Pants for the Morning’s purple glow—
/ The Purple Glow that cheers his breast” (59–60). The cheerfulness
of the sunrise, with the pun on purple and its associations of regal or
exalted birth, as well as the impending spilling of the King’s blood,
is appropriately conflicted. With the image of the sunrise, now Laura
Maria can fully envision the grief and terror of the King’s family, his
children, “the infant Victims,” and his Queen:

When will the vivifying ORB,


The tears of widow’d Love absorb?
SEE ! SEE ! the palpitating breast,
By all the Weeping Graces drest,
Now dumb with grief – now raving wild,
Bending o’er each with’ring Child,
The ONLY Treasures spar’d by savage Ire,
The fading SHADOWS of their MURDER’D SIRE ! (192–3; 65–72)

Louis himself remains inaccessible, while Robinson’s Laura Maria


humanizes Marie Antoinette as his widow and mother of his chil-
dren. At this image, the poem deliberately falters as the poet’s imagi-
nation cannot bear its own imagery: “Oh! FANCY, spread thy pow’rful
wing, / From H ELL’S polluted confines spring” (1: 193; 73–4). The
poem cannot even imagine the King going to meet his doom, but
it can envisage the “RUTHLESS FIENDS” who “triumph in the Deed
accurs’d!” (77–8). The poem, thus, is not a fragment in any for-
mal sense: it is only a glimpse, its imagery working as synecdoche
for the course of the Revolution. The poem closes with images of
obfuscation:

See, her veil OBLIVION throws


O’er the last of Human Woes;
The ROYAL STOLE, with many a crimson stain,
Closes from every eye the scene of pain. . . . (79–82)

Although Laura Maria refuses to see the King’s death, she hears “the
WAR SONG” that “drowns the dying groan, WHICH A NGELS WEEP TO
HEAR !” (83–4). She can imagine heavenly remorse for the death of
the King, not necessarily the start of the war. The poem concludes,
therefore, with regret that the war has begun, but it places culpability
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 103

squarely on the shoulders of the French Revolutionaries, her coun-


try’s enemies.
Robinson’s “Marie Antoinette’s Lamentation, in Her Prison of
the Temple” appeared in the Oracle a little over two weeks after the
“Fragment,” on 8 March 1793. This poem concludes the trio of Laura
Maria poems against the French Revolution. As a “lamentation,” it
is particularly formal and, while not an ode, is strictly homostrophic:
Robinson uses a six-line stanza in iambic pentameter like the Venus
and Adonis stanza (ababcc), but she likely did not intend a formal
allusion to Shakespeare’s erotic poem. Yet this fixed stanza does order
the poem more definitively than the previous two poems, and dem-
onstrates Robinson’s move away from highly irregular forms toward
an apparent preference for working in fixed forms, many of which,
as we will see, she devises herself. The formality here is an attempt
to present the French Queen with a sober dignity, to demonstrate a
composure of mind—the rationality that Robinson prizes in so much
of her poetry. Unlike the previous poems, Robinson’s Laura Maria
ventriloquizes Marie Antoinette, with the avatar dispersing some-
what the poet’s personal identification with her based on their actual
encounter years before. The formality highlights the artifice of the
constructed lament, but does not serve to diminish the effect of the
poem; rather, Robinson is particularly invested in the craftsmanship
of the poem. The strict form helps the poet to portray the Queen as
a woman of deep sensibility with an almost Burkean dignity, and to
avoid any hint of hysteria—at least until the end. The first five stanzas
all employ the same rhetorical structure: the first line, “When . . . ”;
the third line, “Why . . . ?”; the fifth line, “Alas! because. . . . ” These
repeated structures have a cumulative effect in the accretion of Marie
Antoinette’s woes and the injustice of her predicament. Robinson
wants to portray the Queen as a respectable and reasonable woman,
and as a devoted and competent mother, not as the degenerate aris-
tocratic monster her persecutors painted her as being. Garnai aptly
describes the poem as a “tableau of domestic solicitude” (89).
Robinson’s poem responds to the pressing concern that the National
Convention intends to separate the Queen from her children: “Why
do maternal Sorrows drench my face?” Laura Maria asks as Marie
Antoinette; “Alas! because inhuman hands unite, / To tear from my
fond Soul its last delight!” (1: 194; 28–30). To do so would be an
act of “fell Barbarity!” (31). The “Lamentation” in the poeticized
voice of Marie Antoinette pleads for the innocence of her children in
the face of imminent execution. And while the poem emphasizes its
subject’s maternity, Laura Maria allows her Marie Antoinette to avow
hereditary privilege, urging her children to face their doom “with
104 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

proud disdain” and to take strength from “the glorious tide that fills
each Vein” (61, 63). But the woman’s maternal instincts assert their
primacy in the portrayal: at the thought of their ultimate separation,
Marie Antoinette exclaims, “Oh! all the MOTHER rushes to my heart!”
(66). Only at the end does this Marie Antoinette succumb to the
terror of her situation as she recalls the horrific murder of her hus-
band at the hands of the revolutionaries with imagery reminiscent of
Priam’s slaughter at Troy: “See! See! they pierce, with many a recre-
ant Sword, / The mangled bosom of my bleeding L ORD!” (71–2). The
penetrative violation of the male body is particularly shocking; what
was obscene in the “Fragment” is fully realized here. The poem can-
not continue beyond this “dreadful thought” and “agony supreme”
(73), and even though its project appears to be the eliciting of sympa-
thy for the “widow Capet,” as she was known in France, Laura Maria
ends the poem essentially with a plea for a compassionate end to her
suffering “in sweet Oblivion’s dream”—a consummation devoutly to
be wished that can only mean the death that Laura Maria imagines
the Queen herself supplicating (75–8).18 Despite its manifest inten-
tion, the poem concludes with Marie Antoinette thinking only of
herself, asking “the CHERUB P ITY” to “save ONE VICTIM from the
L AST DESPAIR!” (77–8).
Although this conclusion points to a compelling ambivalence,
Laura Maria’s performance of the Queen’s predicament served well
enough as pro-government propaganda in the pages of the Oracle.
Like many liberals, Robinson was distressed by the violence in France
and the outbreak of a war in which her country had no clear objective
once the French monarchs were dead. This trio of poems, moreover,
appeared just as Pitt began implementing measures to defend the
country against invasion from without and insurrection from within.
These poems, despite what might be some proto-feminist sympathy
for the Queen, are a long way from Robinson’s later radicalism. The
Whigs, at this time, were divided over reform and the Revolution.
Appearing in the Oracle, Laura Maria’s poems, which everyone now
knew were Robinson’s, amounted to support for Pitt’s war because
they delineate the terrifying menace represented by France. The
humanization of Marie Antoinette put Robinson at odds with those
who argued that the war was unnecessary because France was no real
threat to Great Britain. This was Fox’s position. Fox detested Paine
and his politics as much as the Tories did, but was concerned that Pitt
and the King were conspiring to undermine the English constitution
by plunging the country into a war that, if successful, would only
reaffirm monarchical absolutism and despotism not only in France,
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 105

but in all of Europe (Mitchell 129–32). Robinson, moreover, was still


attached to Tarleton, who shared the Duke of Portland’s increasing
uneasiness over the course of the Revolution. The political alliance
between Fox and Portland began to crumble as Portland supported
such Pittite measures as the Alien Bill and the suspension of habeas
corpus. Tarleton stood by Portland, not by Fox. I do not wish to
presume that Robinson necessarily shared the political views of her
long-time partner, but, to readers of the newspaper, the trio of Laura
Maria poems from the fall and winter of 1792–3 would have served as
documentary support for Pitt’s prosecution of the war.19
The evidence shows Robinson participating in a conservative net-
work. In terms of literary productivity and attendant literary fame,
1793 was a year of accomplishments and acclaim, culminating in
the specious praise from the True Briton. In January, the European
Magazine led that month’s issue with an engraved portrait and “An
Account of Mrs. Robinson” that praised, in addition to her writing,
her beauty, her knowledge of French and German, and other grace-
ful accomplishments. While the article does recount her theatrical
career, it makes no mention of the Perdita scandal. It also reasserts
her authority as Laura Maria, Oberon, and Laura and attributes the
Julia avatar to Robinson. On 17 January, the Ministerial Star hailed
Robinson again as “the British Sappho,” promising a second volume
of poems and a forthcoming opera. On 26 March, the Ministerial
Sun complained that Robinson’s opera was being derailed by anti-
government politics because “the Songs and the Sentiments contained
a degree of loyal enthusiasm not quite congenial to the feelings of
ALL PARTIES.” In other words, the paper implies that Robinson’s loy-
alist sentiments are unpopular with those in the theatre who hold
reformist views, indirectly pointing toward Sheridan and his network.
Robinson, indeed, had intended for Sheridan to stage at Drury Lane
(7: 302). But Robinson’s networking was always more social and liter-
ary than strictly political. On 8 June, the True Briton complimented
Robinson on her socializing: “We have nothing like literary conver-
sationi’s in this Country—Mrs. ROBINSON’S parties only excepted.”
Taylor knew from experience the pleasure of Robinson’s company, as
his memoir shows. Again, in all of this, none of the opposition papers
puffs Robinson except the Morning Post, once Daniel Stuart takes
charge of it. Despite the vitriol the newspapers spewed at one another,
the social networks implicit here did not divide and polarize accord-
ing to political positions.
During 1793, Robinson was engaged in more ambitious literary
projects. Her opera, Kate of Aberdeen, continued to be promoted well
106 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

into 1794 but never materialized on stage or in print. In the summer


of 1793, Robinson struck back at Gifford with her two-canto poetic
satire Modern Manners, signed “Horace Juvenal,” thereby incongru-
ously yoking for comic effect the two great (but very different) Roman
satirists in opposition to Gifford’s imitation of Persius. Robinson
clearly means to imitate the great English satirist Pope, himself a com-
mitted Tory. Like Gifford, Robinson chooses Pope’s Dunciad as her
model, referring to it throughout. She of course, therefore, adopts the
heroic couplet, as Pope and Gifford do, but she also means to attack
Gifford from his own ideological position. The poem is thoroughly
conservative, anti-Jacobin even (Strachan 91). Gary Dyer points out
that women writing between 1789 and 1832 “generally shunned the
conventional satiric forms” and that Robinson, in writing Modern
Manners as a “formal verse satire,” “was practically alone in appro-
priating this classical form” (150). “Horace Juvenal” functions not so
much as one of her avatars; it is a decided guise for Robinson to pose
as a masculine Tory satirist, full of swagger and venom. As such, the
“Lilliputian” Gifford himself is beneath notice—he was short—and
she portrays him as one of a class of “critic elves” and “calm assas-
sins of poetic worth” (1: 196; 1.1, 6). Robinson’s targets are many,
most of her barbs directed at the fashionable world in which she once
moved. But she does take satirical aim at such targets as sentimental
fiction published by William Lane (1.122), women (like herself) who
love The Sorrows of Young Werter (1.123), Erskine’s defense of Paine
(1.195–6), bluestockings (1.197–206), and especially fashionable
Francophilia, sarcastically equating Buchoz’s recipes for cosmetics
with the writings of suspected Jacobins Holcroft and Wollstonecraft
(1: 208; 2.133–46). What begins as a counterattack on Gifford’s
Baviad culminates with “Horace Juvenal” mocking English women,
“the boast of modern times, / Who ape the French,—yet shudder at
their crimes” (2.183–4). The poem objects severely to the hypocrisy
of admiring French culture at a time when France itself is governed
by “the dreadful havock made by Anarchy” (2.186). Robinson as
Horace Juvenal asks, “Why deck your brows with flow’rs from Gallia’s
shore, / When Gallia’s lily withers—drench’d in gore?” (2.201–2).
The poem closes with a patriotic celebration of the virtues of “happy
Britain” (2.188) and the assertion that “Transcendent Virtue guards
Britannia’s coast!” (2.204). Although Modern Manners is not an
overt denunciation of Revolutionary principles, it is careful to main-
tain positions friendly to the government. By constructing the satire
this way, Robinson cannily figures that the best way to undermine
Gifford is to appear to do so from his own side.
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 107

As a professional writer and, in some ways, an entertainer,


Robinson may have been responding to what she believed her audi-
ence wanted to read. Modern Manners, however, was not successful.
The magazine reviews were lukewarm, although the papers predict-
ably puffed its brilliance. In August the Oracle and the Morning Post,
proudly revealed that Robinson was the poet behind the mask of
Horace Juvenal (Werkmeister, Newspaper 311). She did not disavow
her authorship, but she never reprinted it. Her next significant claim
to the poetic laurel again addresses the fate of Marie Antoinette and
speaks to the outrage many Britons, particularly those in Robinson’s
circles, felt over her execution. Almost two months after the execution
of the French Queen, Robinson published, under her own name, her
long poem in heroic couplets Monody to the Memory of the Late Queen
of France, the title of which evokes her poem on another illustrious
death from the previous year—her Monody to the Memory of Sir Joshua
Reynolds—making a weird cultural pairing of the great English por-
traitist and the infamously wicked Queen, both of whom Robinson
had known personally. This poem is ably discussed in depth by Craciun
and Garnai, so I need not provide a reading of it here.20 But I con-
tend that the poem fits in with the discernable pattern of Robinson’s
publications in 1792–3, reflecting again ambivalence toward the
Revolution; it is also a poem that corresponds with Robinson’s project
of asserting poetic fame for herself through form. Robinson hails the
Queen as an “ILLUSTRIOUS SOUL” whose fame “shall ne’er decay” and
as “the BEAUTEOUS M ARTYR! Austria’s pride!” (1: 240; 10, 139). And
she represents the Revolution as a Hobbesian nightmare conjured
by misguided democratic principles: “While ALL are RULERS — ALL ,
alas! are SLAVES ! / E ACH dreads his fellow, EACH his fellow braves!”
(101–2). Robinson’s Monody represents this revolution as a far greater
crime than any perpetrated by the deceased royal couple, who again
appear as cogs in a system of oppression— “crimes LONG PAST”—that
they only passively inherited but for which they nonetheless suffered
(247). Some recent readings of this poem, such as those by Craciun
and Garnai, avoid Robinson’s acknowledged sympathy for the French
nobility, whom she pities as “the MANY suff’ring for the GUILTY FEW!”
(441–2). But she also condemns any corrupt aristocrat “Who shields
his recreant bosom with a NAME” (449), while also denouncing the
revolutionaries’ capricious, even terrifyingly arbitrary, persecution of
all those born with a title. The poem asserts a principle of equality
that extends to even the titled and proud. “TRUTH,” Robinson con-
tends, “can derive no eminence from birth” and its “blest dominion”
is “vast and unconfin’d” (455–6). But the poem is not radical because
108 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

it argues that the Revolution has not been worth the cost: “Heav’n
forbid . . . That Liberty, immortal as the spheres, / Should steep her
Laurel in a nation’s Tears!” (465–8). Despite its antagonism toward
the Revolution, the Monody, unlike Modern Manners, resists jingo-
ism. Instead, Robinson concludes with a rumination on “Immortal
GENIUS” that recalls her phrase from the dedication of Sight to
Taylor—the “Aristocracy of Genius.” Robinson’s poem oddly recalls
the conclusion of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, which must have been her
favorite poem considering the number of times she alludes to it. In
Pope’s poem, Eloisa imagines the poet who will one day sing of her
ill-fated romance with Abelard, as Pope thus reminds the reader that
he is indeed that poet. Robinson similarly adopts Eloisa’s immortal-
izing conceit, except that she applies it more to herself than to the
French Queen. It is the “votive line”—the poem itself—that is the
manifestation of immortal genius, so Robinson commands that the
“MUSE’S LAUREL , and her FAME” belong to the poem itself (509–10).
Robinson’s principle of equality does not extend to everyone when it
comes to merit: She asks Genius to “twine round Merit’s brow the
wreath of Fame, / And give Nobility a loftier name!” (531–2). Thus,
the Monody asks to exchange hereditary eminence for the favor of the
Muse. The apotheosis is Robinson’s own—she achieves the laurel. It is
Robinson’s “tribute just, / The POET’S NUMBERS” that “consecrates”
the “dust,” the remains of Marie Antoinette, whose fate ultimately
will serve as “An awful lesson for each future age!” (533–4, 548).
By the end of 1793, the Oracle, the True Briton, and the Morning
Post all had personal and professional claims on Robinson. To them
she was one of the greatest poets in the English language. Several of
Robinson’s personal letters to Taylor have survived and attest to a
deep and sincere friendship between them. Davenport presumes that
Robinson did not know about his propagandizing (7: 395), but his
involvement with the True Briton, a professed instrument for gov-
ernment propaganda, would have made it abundantly clear. And she
would have known about his shenanigans in Edinburgh in 1792,
where he was tried for inflaming anti-government rioters, but acquit-
ted when he was revealed to be working for the Ministry (Barrell,
Imagining 393). Robinson must have countenanced or overlooked
these activities. No letters written after Taylor’s appearance against
Thelwall in November of 1794 survive, so it is hard to know how
that might have affected their friendship. Only a month before in
October, Robinson wrote to Taylor about her conflicted relationship
with her “Muse”: “I swear every day to quit her for Ever; and am,
every day, as constantly forsworn” (7: 306). In the same letter, she
B e l l’s L a u r e a t e s I I 109

includes a poem that would eventually appear in her novel Angelina,


in 1796; it expresses a more modest ambition than what appears at
the end of her Monody for Marie Antoinette:

Heav’n knows, I never would repine,


Though fortunes fiercest frown were mine,—
If Fate would grant that o’er my tomb
One little Laurel wreath, might bloom,
And Mem’ry, sometimes wander near,
To bid it live,—and drop a tear! (7: 305)

Two days later, on 16 October 1794, Taylor published this poem in


the True Briton, prefacing it with a token of his esteem: “The ele-
gance, and still more, the plaintive charm, that pervades the follow-
ing beautiful Lines, will, we doubt not, induce every Reader of taste
to ascribe them to MRS. ROBINSON.”
This poem turns out to be a peculiar axis of Robinson’s politi-
cal ambivalence, for Sampson Perry republished the poem excerpted
from Angelina two years later in his revived radical print, the Argus,
to which Merry also contributed (Perry 300).21 Craciun takes the
publication of the poem in the Argus to be evidence of Robinson’s
other contributions to that paper in 1796 (British 82–5). In the
poem, Robinson prefers her little laurel to “worldly pow’r” by which
some “tyrannize o’er him whom fate / has destin’d to a lowly state”
and suggests that would the “little great endure / The pangs they sel-
dom stoop to cure” then “the loftiest, proudest, would confess / The
sweetest pow’r—the pow’r to bless” (True Briton 16 October 1794).
The poem reads differently in each context: in the True Briton, this
is standard humanitarian fare, politically unthreatening and benevo-
lent; two years later, in Perry’s Argus, these sentiments likely had a
singular resonance. Certainly, by then, Robinson was writing more
overtly radical poetry and prose. As early as 1794, her novel The
Widow was suspected of espousing radical sentiments in its satiri-
cal portraits of upper-class women; the Morning Post rushed to her
defense, sarcastically attacking the pomposity of the “fashionable
Widows” who “wonder how a woman without rank, dares takes lib-
erties with great people” while espousing “the cause of the Swinish
multitude” (13 February 1794). But then again, her untitled poem
beginning “Heav’n knows, I never would repine” also appeared in
the True Briton as well as later in the Argus. The irony of this dual
publication is that the government ran Perry’s Argus out of business
and rechristened that paper as the True Briton on 1 January 1793
110 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

(Werkmeister, Newspaper 143). Taylor was one of the new proprietors


and may have had a hand in the coup. But that does not appear to
have damaged his friendship with Robinson or diminished his appre-
ciation of her poetry.
In roughly the second half of her career, Robinson’s radicalism is
abundantly clear, so scholars interested in Robinson tend to presume
that she held consistently radical political views running from Ainsi
va le monde through Lyrical Tales. Her political views from 1788 to
1795 are actually far murkier and more difficult to discern. I have
attempted to unravel those aspects of her publicity that are particu-
larly relevant to her quest for poetic fame, but these reveal greater
complexities and seeming contradictions. As she established herself
as the English Sappho, her poetical publicity, as distinguished from
her previous celebrity, involves an array of political and professional
networking that attests to her dexterity as an actor in those networks
and that firmly established her literary career. In her personal life,
Robinson thrived on social intercourse, and here at the middle of her
career, her social circle somehow managed to include such antago-
nists as Merry and Taylor. Whatever her true feelings were, Robinson
wisely maintained positions and connections that facilitated that
career. After the most repressive measures of Pitt’s government go
into effect—particularly the “Gagging Acts” of 1795—Robinson
becomes a resolute and committed radical whose associates include
Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Coleridge. She would soon find herself,
like Fox, in the “political wilderness” but without anything like his
resources. She had to continue to rely on her Muse and on her pen in
order to survive.
Chapter 3

Th e E ngl ish S a ppho a n d t h e


L egi t i m at e S on n e t

T he obituary that appeared in the Sun on 31 December 1800, five


days after her death, does not mention any of Mary Robinson’s com-
positions except for her poetry.

The late Mrs. ROBINSON certainly possessed great Poetical powers.


Her imagination was vivid, and fraught with a variety of imagery.—
Her language was rich and glowing. If she had obeyed the impulse
of her own genius, her compositions would have displayed a beauti-
ful simplicity, but she was unluckily ensnared by the DELLA CRUSCA
School, and was often betrayed into a gaudy luxuriance of expression.
Several of her Poems are, however, wholly undebased by this orna-
mental extravagance, and are indeed simple, interesting, and beauti-
ful. . . . It should be mentioned to her honour, that though she was
ambitious of the title of the British Sappho, there is none of the wan-
ton fervor in her Works which are supposed to have characterized the
Lesbian Poetess, but on the contrary, her Muse is always employed in
the cause of Morals, Sentiment, and Humanity.

The terms of the Sun’s approbation of Robinson’s poetry resonate


with the conceptual framework and critical concerns of the study at
hand. Probably authored by the paper’s editor-proprietor John Heriot
or possibly by her friend Taylor, the obituary remembers Robinson
as a talented poet who, by the end of the century, was working in
a style that the columnist recognizes as antithetical to the popular
style of the early 1790s. The aesthetic of simplicity that the memori-
alist admires is not something that came easily to Robinson, whose
112 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poetry, as we have seen, delights in extravagant lyricism and virtuoso


performance. She never loses these tendencies, but she hones her skills
and comes to practice a poetics of discipline and rigor that for her is
the ultimate assertion of her intellectual and cultural pre-eminence.
As this obituary shows, Robinson’s ambition was obvious.
Although qualified, the praise admitted here is somewhat surprising
as the progovernment Sun, owned by Heriot who also owned the
Treasury-directed True Briton, was the inveterate enemy of the liberal
Morning Post and its owner Daniel Stuart, Robinson’s employer at
the time of her death. By the end of her career, the democratic—and
thus deemed Jacobin and radical—politics of novels such as Hubert
de Sevrac and Walsingham was notorious, so it is not surprising to
find Robinson’s fiction beneath notice here. Particularly remarkable
is the absence of any reference to her personal life combined with the
recognition of virtuous principles to be found in her poetry, even if
her politics were objectionable. The columnist here also finds faintly
distasteful Robinson’s being “ambitious of the title of the British
Sappho,” although he rather backhandedly commends her poetry for
not expressing the “wanton fervor” supposedly characteristic of the
original Sappho. Encoded here is vague approbation for Robinson’s
having corrected the “wanton fervor” of her own personal life and its
early history, as well as that of her affiliation with the “Della Crusca
school” and its “ornamental extravagance.” Robinson’s obsession with
poetic fame always involved the necessary and concomitant work of
rehabilitating her image. But Robinson could never efface her history;
she had to own up to her past in order to transcend it. She wanted,
moreover, her public to witness her rejection of “wanton fervor” in
favor of intellectual rigor and poetic discipline.
Her Sappho and Phaon. In a Series of Legitimate Sonnets per-
forms this rejection. Ambitious as she was of the laurel and the title
of English Sappho, Robinson figuratively had to kill “the Lesbian
Poetess,” along with all other competitors for the title, and assert
her superiority. In other words, the last thing she wanted was to be
thought of as merely a “poetess,” although she herself occasionally
uses the term. I assert that Robinson practices a masculine poetics
that distinguishes her poetry from that of her female contemporaries.
No work demonstrates this better than her sonnet sequence Sappho
and Phaon. It was inevitable that Robinson would engage her literary
namesake, Sappho; but when she does, it is through a complicated
literary and intertextual network that is decidedly heteroerotic and
poetically masculine. In Sappho and Phaon, she reappropriates the
figure of Sappho through Petrarchan form in order to legitimize her
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 113

claim to the title of “English Sappho.” While many of her poems first
appeared in print pseudonymously, Sappho and Phaon was published
as a volume with her actual authorship clearly identified. For her
series of “legitimate sonnets,” Robinson presents herself unequivo-
cally as the poet Mary Robinson.
From 1788, the start of her poetic career, until her death at the
end of 1800, Robinson’s poetic ambitions were masculine in a way
that those of most of her female peers were not. These ambitions gov-
erned her participation in the Della Crusca network, and through-
out the 1790s, Robinson clearly maintains her appetite for poetic
play—complicated formal experimentation, exaggerated figurative
language, winking intertextuality, playful sexuality, and hyperbolic
ambition—among networks of male writers and masculine-inflected
texts. Making only negligible obeisance to any poetic predecessors
and contemporaries who were women, Robinson positioned herself
in her verse as an erotic compeer and a poetic competitor to male
poets. Her formal and professional interaction with Merry estab-
lished a pattern that Robinson would follow for the rest of her career.
These formal assignations connected herself, her avatars, and her
poetry to other male writers—and their avatars—with whom she felt
poetic affinity as well as friendship. After Merry, these would include
playwright James Boaden (“Arno”), satirist John Wolcot (“Peter
Pindar”), author Samuel Jackson Pratt (“Courtney Melmoth”), and
poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Francini,” “Laberius”). There are no
female poetic correspondents, except for a Miss Vaughan who wrote
to Laura as “Cesario.” Even when Robinson writes to Charlotte
Smith, her chief literary rival, she emphasizes Smith as a mother, not
as a poet (see chapter one). With the exception of Anna Matilda, the
other female addressees, notably not correspondents, in Robinson’s
poetic canon are her own daughter, other mothers, and deceased girls.
The only, and significant, exception to this is Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire, whom throughout her career Robinson always regards
as a patron, celebrity, and sister, a woman, wife, and mother—but
never as a fellow writer. And, as we have seen in chapter one, many of
these tributes to other women are mediated through the masculine
persona of Oberon.
Robinson’s heteroerotic poetics is always associated with the “wreath
of fame,” a laurel she is not especially willing to share with her poeti-
cally minded sisters. Using the pseudonym “Anne Frances Randall,”
Robinson does pay tribute to her fellow literary countrywomen in her
Letter to the Women of England but not without some ambivalence—
and not without highlighting her own pre-eminence among them. In
114 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

that work, the only contemporary woman poet Robinson identifies in


the main body of the pamphlet is “Mrs. Robinson,” and that refer-
ence is apposite to Sappho and her own “legitimate sonnets” (8: 143).
Most telling is the conclusion where Robinson names distinguished
contemporary women authors in various genres: for providing “the
best translations from the French and German” she credits Susannah
Dobson, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Ann Plumptre; for “the more pro-
found researches in the dead languages” she distinguishes Elizabeth
Carter, Millecent Thomas, Anne Francis, Anne Seymour Damer;
noteworthy women playwrights who have won “the wreath of fame”
include Hannah Cowley, Inchbald, Sophia Lee, and Hannah More;
and significant biographers include Dobson, Ann Ford Thicknesse,
Hester Piozzi, Elizabeth Montagu, and Helen Maria Williams (8:
160). She does not fail to praise women novelists and women poets:
“The best novels that have been written, since those of Smollet [sic],
Richardson, and Fielding, have been produced by women,” she writes.
Robinson expresses high regard for women poets too:

Poetry has unquestionably risen high in British literature from the pro-
ductions of female pens; for many English women have produced such
original and beautiful compositions, that the first critics and scholars
of the age have wondered, while they applauded. (8: 160)

She, however, chooses not to recognize any of them by name. Although


she lists thirty-nine women writers in her alphabetical “List of British
Female Literary Characters Living in the Eighteenth Century,”
including poets such as Barbauld, Anna Seward, and Charlotte Smith
(161–3), Robinson remains the only contemporary poet identified by
“Anne Frances Randall” in the body of the work. The pseudonym, in
this case, is no avatar, rather providing an illusion of impartiality as
Robinson promotes herself as the superlative example—the English
Sappho indeed.
Robinson viewed her literary corpus through gendered bifocals.
Like many of her time, Robinson recognized the contemporary novel
as a feminine genre and the poetic tradition as a masculine one. She
could perform in either genre, deploying either of these specifically
gendered author functions, but she considered poetry to be the more
legitimate genre, the one with more artistic authority, and thus the
one most likely to earn her fame as an author. Her fiction was writ-
ten for money and, unwracked by any serious literary pretense, could
therefore address more transient, contemporary issues, frequently
with satire; her fiction is thus more nearsighted and free to associate
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 115

with the work of other women novelists of the decade, particularly


Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Hays, whom she clearly
imitates. Her novels, moreover, clearly were written in haste—as she
admitted—and were motivated by commercial concerns (7: 290).
Robinson may have shared Smith’s genuine distaste for novels, even
though Smith too wrote novels for money: Smith once stated, “I love
Novels ‘no more than a Grocer does figs’ ” (Collected Letters 81).1
In other words, they suit her only insofar as they sell. In the preface
to the third edition of her first novel, Vancenza, Robinson declares,
“I disclaim the title of a Writer of Novels” (2: 482). Although she
also penned several novels, in producing her poetry Robinson has
her sights set further off in the distance, on the future and poetic
immortality. So, she repeatedly claims the title of poet. Her view
of poetry and poetic aspiration is essentially masculine. Robinson’s
poetry avoids intertextual associations with other women poets,
distinguished instead by a predominant heteroerotic poetics that is
always associated with fame. The word fame appears more than 200
times throughout Robinson’s poetry, compared with fewer than ten
instances in Smith’s, along with dozens of other references to wreaths,
garlands, and laurels. Robinson’s poetry reveals a poet not content to
be a woman poet.
She knew well that for centuries, particularly after Raphael’s
Parnassus (1512), any woman with literary inclinations was con-
descendingly dubbed “Sappho” and that such a designation was
as ephemeral as the papyrus on which the original Sappho wrote.2
Nevertheless, “Sappho” was an avatar that Robinson could appropri-
ate and use, risky as it most certainly was. And she did have to com-
pete for it. Even as late as 1797, the year after Robinson’s Sappho and
Phaon appeared, the Morning Post, with which Robinson was affili-
ated, described, without irony, Anna Seward as “the SAPHO of the
Age” (1 September 1797). This surely would have stung Robinson,
especially considering Seward’s immaculate reputation as the (unmar-
ried) “Swan of Lichfield.” Given her own public history, Robinson
found herself saddled with and yet jealous of another potentially
problematic epithet. Although Plato supposedly dubbed the original
Sappho “the Tenth Muse,” the original woman from the isle of Lesbos
remains a mystery, her actual identity obfuscated by competing myths
of her sexuality. These narratives are familiar enough to us today,
especially since her supposed homosexuality is the source of the term
lesbian. Sappho’s erotic relationships with other women were known
in the eighteenth century but usually were attributed to her excessive
sensibility or, less charitably, to her nymphomania. For instance, in
116 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

his manual on Conjugal Love, reprinted in England in French and


English throughout the eighteenth century, seventeenth-century
physician Nicolas Venette attributed Sappho’s fate to an enlarged cli-
toris (9). Addison wondered in Spectator 223 that, considering “the
Character that is given of her Works, whether it is not for the Benefit
of Mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching
Tenderness and Rapture, that it might have been dangerous to have
given them a reading” (15 November 1711). In 1740, the entry on
Sappho in the Biographia Classica remarks that, after her husband’s
death, Sappho was “unable to confine that Passion to one person” and
that sexual desire “was too violent in her to be restrained even to one
sex” (43). But these accounts of Sappho ultimately reaffirm the poet’s
doomed but insistently heterosexual passion for Phaon. As Addison
writes, “Sappho so transported with the Violence of her Passion, that
she was resolved to get rid of it at any Price”—her famously fatal leap
from the Leucadian rock in a desperate effort to cure her hopeless
passion. The desire to normalize Sappho’s sexuality goes as far back
as Menander’s play The Leukadia (ca. 300 BC), which is the most
likely source for the story of Sappho’s rejection by the handsome fer-
ryman Phaon and subsequent suicide. In the eighteenth century, the
issue of Sappho’s sexuality was a vexed one, although interest in her
was revived by new translations of Longinus and Ovid that engen-
dered reassessments of her poetry and retellings of her ostensibly
heterosexual history.3 Alessandro Vierri’s 1782 hugely popular novel
Le Avventure di Saffo, poetessa di Mitilene, for example, retells the
Sappho and Phaon story, concluding with the poet’s fatal leap, and
refutes Sappho’s supposed tribadism and “dissolute habits” (2: 213).
Thomas Cadell, one of John Bell’s competitors in the Strand, pub-
lished an English translation, The Adventures of Sappho, in 1789.4
So, when the Monthly Review in 1791 hailed Robinson as the
“English Sappho,” it was primarily commendatory, although the
implied allusion to the story of Sappho’s frenzied passion for Phaon—
her “wanton fervor”—would have reminded everyone of Robinson’s
own history as the rejected lover of the Prince of Wales. The epi-
thet already had unsavory associations. Aphra Behn, for instance,
had been compared with Sappho but not favorably: In his 1691 “The
Poetess, A Satyr,” Robert Gould mocked Behn’s poor health, imply-
ing venereal disease and calling her “Sapho, famous for Her Gout and
Guilt.” He adds, “For Punk and Poetess agree so Pat, / You cannot
well be This, and not be That” (16–7). Similarly, William Wycherley
portrayed Behn as a promiscuous and syphilitic Sappho in his poem
“To the Sappho of the Age, Suppos’d to Ly-In of a Love-Distemper,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 117

or a Play” (191–2).5 And for Robinson, a lover of Pope’s poetry, the


name Sappho also would have had the negative associations found
throughout his poetry, particularly in the animosity he expresses
toward Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, also called “Sappho.” In his
versification of Donne’s “Satire II,” Pope, for example, adds a super-
fluous jab at Montagu not in the original: “As who knows Sapho,
smiles at other whores” (6). The intellectual woman and the profes-
sional woman writer, long before the bluestocking epithet, was often
regarded as merely a better class of whore, whose talents mitigate
somewhat the sins of that class. Popular English and French transla-
tions during the eighteenth century helped somewhat to rehabilitate
Sappho as a figure of lyrical elegance.
Just as Sappho’s history is replete with claims that she was a nym-
phomaniac, tribadist, and prostitute, Robinson herself, assigned the
epithet “Perdita,” was called a prostitute in the newspapers and was
the subject of popular pornography.6 While Robinson would have
appreciated the recognition of her poetical talents by the early 1790s,
the implicit comparison between her personal history and that of the
ancient Greek poet potentially could have derailed her claims to poetic
legitimacy and fame by continuing to call attention to her question-
able virtue. When she first became the subject of gossip, most of it
was relatively innocuous and flattering of her beauty and charms. As
she gradually became associated with a succession of supposed lov-
ers, chief among them the Prince, the gossip became more malicious.
The Morning Herald, for instance, reported on the “midnight orgies
celebrated at the hotel de Perdita” presided over by “the coronetted
high-priest, and other right honorable novitiates” (25 May 1781). The
papers delighted in the suggestion that the Prince and his friends, such
as Lord Malden, Fox, and finally Tarleton, were sharing Robinson’s
body. The Morning Post parodied the papers’ “Ship News” columns
with the clever conceit of “the Perdita Frigate,” which the paper notes
is “a prodigious fine clean-bottom’d vessel” (21 September 1783). The
column recounts this particular ship’s many exploits, having briefly
captured “the Florizel, a most valuable ship belonging to the crown,”
but in turn was taken by “the Fox” and “the Malden.” The report
concludes with the image of “the Tarleton” “coming along side of the
Perdita, fully determined to board her sword in hand,” at which point
“she instantly surrendered at discretion.” As Robinson’s fortunes
fell, the press gleefully recommended Robinson, identified only as
Perdita, as an object lesson. The Morning Post reported in 1784 that
“a life of wanton dissipation has reduced her to penury and distress;
poverty, with all its horrors surrounds her; her constitution and the
118 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

use of her limbs are gone; death stares her in the face” (16 August
1784). A month later, in the same paper, a correspondent defines
prostitute as “a woman who sacrifices chastity to sensuality”; he goes
on to parody Linnaeus by providing a taxonomy of such women.
Robinson is identified in the “order” of “kept mistresses by Princes
and Nobility,” as a “species” of “those who are prostitutes by profes-
sion, as Perdita, &c.” (10 September 1784). The Morning Post at
this time (under different proprietorship) was particularly vicious and
continually reminded its readers of Robinson’s penury and dimin-
ished physical beauty. An engraved print in the Rambler’s Magazine,
for instance, depicts Robinson in rags begging from the Prince of
Wales—a reference to the annuity she was able to secure from the
Royal Family. Her critics viewed this as extortion as well as prosti-
tution, so the papers continued to titillate its readers with hints of
Robinson’s sexual depravity long after her affair with the Prince had
ended: for instance, one report on her sojourn in France imaged “the
Perdita” among “a Convent of Nuns,” noting on supposed authority
that “certain friars, it is said, have found her a very warm convert!”
(25 September 1784). Expressing mock compassion for “the poor
fallen Perdita,” the paper reported on the auctioning of her property
for debts, while licentiously reminding its readers that the “Cyprian
Corps” is without leadership; now there is “no Perdita aspiring to the
queenship of impurity” (10 January 1785, 11 February 1785).
Reports on her activities in the gossip pages of the 1780s, more-
over, had been fascinated with her health and were tinged with the
morbid frisson that the promiscuous Perdita would get what she
deserved—death. Presumably providing what its readers wanted, the
papers exulted in her downfall and disgrace and looked forward to
her demise: the Public Advertiser reported, “The Perdita yet contin-
ues unrecovered; a wretched victim of vicious folly” (6 April 1785).
During the summer of 1786, the papers got their wish: a false report
of her death abroad circulated widely in the papers. For instance, the
General Evening Post noted the death, “in indigence and obscurity,”
of “the once famous Perdita (Mrs. Robinson)” in Paris, describing
it as “another fatal instance of the unhappy tendency of beauty and
accomplishments, when unattended by discretion and virtue!” (11
July 1786). Some tastefully repentant obituaries appeared in the very
papers that savaged her reputation, although the Public Advertiser
and the Morning Post, printing the same obituary, could not resist
asserting that she was her father’s illegitimate daughter (14 July
1786), a claim Robinson felt called upon from Germany to refute in
a widely reprinted letter to the editors (5 August 1786). In asserting
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 119

her legitimacy and vitality, Robinson also attempts to affiliate herself


with moral and intellectual virtue by claiming that she “received my
education under the care of Miss Hanna [sic] More.”7 Nevertheless,
the Morning Chronicle printed a sarcastic poetic “Elegy on Mrs.
R–bins–n, the Late Celebrated Perdita” (9 August 1786). Upon her
return to England in 1788 to begin her literary career, Robinson
would be, in a sense, always writing from beyond the grave.
Robinson knew well from her own downfall that fame is transient
and capricious and blamed her ignominy on the resentment of other
women. She writes in the Memoirs, “I have almost uniformly found
my own sex my most inveterate Enemies; I have experienced little
kindness from them: though my bosom has often ached with the pang
inflicted by their Envy, slander, and malevolence” (7: 239). Moreover,
she attributes the most vicious slanders and satires to the machinations
of “female malice”: “Tales of the most infamous and glaring falsehood
were invented, and I was again assailed by pamphlets, by paragraphs,
and caricatures, and all the artillery of slander . . . ” (7: 265). She blames
not the men who most certainly wrote most if not all of the attacks,
but the women who considered her their rival for celebrity and favor,
and who supposedly directed the slanderous male pens. As she later
explained in a letter to her friend Jane Porter, written just weeks before
her death, “If I do not enter into the true spirit of Friendship for my
own Sex, it is because I have almost universally found that Sex unkind
and hostile towards me” (7: 318). She went to her grave convinced
that other women were instrumental in her persecution. She obviously
felt differently about her male friends, who chivalrously defended her
and whose adoration no doubt pleased her. But Robinson’s reputation
continued to be encumbered by the stigma of having been Perdita,
“the lost one”; for that, she blamed other women.
As a poet, Robinson sought more than adoration from her circle of
friends. She was “ardent in the pursuit of fame.” Robinson’s four-part
essay in the Monthly Magazine, “The Present State of the Manners,
Society, &c. &c. of the Metropolis of England,” signed with her ini-
tials and published in the final months of her life, condemns women
writers for failing to support one another in their shared neglect. She
writes, “Each is ardent in the pursuit of fame; and every new hon-
our which is bestowed on a sister votary, is deemed a partial privation
of what she considers as her exclusive birth-right.” She suggests that,
were there more solidarity, women writers might share greater fame:
“How powerful might such a phalanx become, were it to act in union
of sentiment, and sympathy of feeling; and by a participation of public
fame secure, to the end of time, the admiration of posterity” (8: 204).
120 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

In 1794, she complained to Taylor that her literary aspirations have


turned out to be “false prospects”: “They have led me into the vain
expectation that fame would attend my labours, and my country be my
pride” (7: 303). The adulation she enjoyed from within her professional
networks was as insufficient as her income from her literary labors. Six
years later, nearing the end of her life, Robinson wrote to Godwin,
who apparently had tried to cheer her: “You say that I have ‘Youth and
beauty.’ Ah! Philosopher, how surely do I feel that both are vanished!
You tell me that I have ‘Literary Fame.’ How comes it then that I am
abused, neglected—unhonoured—unrewarded” (7: 320).

The English Petrarch


Although she frequently was hailed as “the English Sappho,” Mary
Robinson actually wanted to be the English Petrarch. No work by
Robinson is more decidedly masculine than Sappho and Phaon, despite
its identification with the pre-eminent woman poet. This is because
the sonnet itself traditionally was a masculine form; and the qualifica-
tion of Robinson’s sonnets as “legitimate” makes the sequence even
more so. The “legitimate sonnet” is the eighteenth-century term for
what we call today the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet; that is, a sonnet
with an octave rhyming abbaabba and a turn, or volta, at the end
of the octave followed by a sestet that concludes the sonnet with a
qualification or resolution. Conversely, in the eighteenth century
and for most of the nineteenth, non-Petrarchan variations, includ-
ing Shakespeare’s, were deemed “illegitimate” sonnets or occasionally
were given the more neutral designation of quatorzain, which sim-
ply means fourteen-line stanza. Robinson thus writes about Sappho,
but she performs as Petrarch. This complicated two-step—or cross-
dressing, if you prefer—involving both gender and form is crucial to
Robinson’s assertion of her poetic supremacy. Eighteenth-century
representations of Sappho, the positive ones in particular, privileged a
feminization of the lyric mode. This is apparent in the many light and
charming newspaper poems that refer to Sappho, that imitate Sappho,
or that claim to be by a modern version of Sappho. Sappho, in the
hands of these writers became, interestingly, a figure for the simpler
forms of erotic lyric poetry, such as the quatrain. The sonnet, how-
ever, itself a “manly” form in its construction, traditionally represents
a rigid poetic culture defined by men for the purpose of delineating
their contrary perceptions of women. From Petrarch’s ideal Laura to
Shakespeare’s carnal dark lady, the sonnet tradition abounds in images
of the hunt, erotic objectification, and female inconstancy—all from
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 121

decidedly male perspectives. The Renaissance tradition had firmly


established sonnet writing as the domain of male poets, usually for
the purpose of wooing women or for establishing reputations at court.
Dorothy Mermin argues that women poets of the seventeenth century
such as Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and Anne Finch became poets
by avoiding direct competition with male poets; they did not write
sonnets, for example (336). They generally chose forms that “seemed
safely unambitious” such as pastorals, fables, and lyrics (341). In order
to exist, Mermin contends, they had to avoid formal territory usually
occupied by men. Thus, there are few extant sonnets by women from
the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, when the sonnet was a mark of
skill and wit and when mostly male poets practiced it.8
Robinson would not have known about the major exception
from this earlier period—Lady Mary Wroth’s sonnets, which were
lost during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and for most
of the twentieth. She did, however, have before her the example
of Charlotte Smith, whose hugely successful Elegiac Sonnets went
through ten ever-expanding editions between 1784 and 1811, earn-
ing the respect of readers, poets, and critics. Neglected by poets
and despised by readers after Milton’s use of the form, the son-
net fell into disuse and disrepute during the Restoration and early
eighteenth century despite its earlier dominance and status.9 With
Elegiac Sonnets and Other Essays (1784), however, Smith became the
first woman poet of the eighteenth century to publish a series of
sonnets and single-handedly revived the sonnet for the Romantic
period. Smith’s formal designation of them as “elegiac” is her way
of admitting that they are, technically, illegitimate because her pre-
ferred sonnet form consists of three elegiac quatrains and a couplet.10
Of the ninety-two sonnets published in her Elegiac Sonnets by the
posthumous tenth edition of 1811, only two faithfully follow the
Petrarchan model: Sonnet XXXII, “To Melancholy,” and Sonnet
XXXIV, “To a Friend.” The majority are irregular in construction,
and thus “illegitimate.” Smith’s success gave license to poets eager to
take liberties with the form and a debate ensued as to the propriety
of Smith’s example. Smith’s success in what was considered to be
an easier form appeared to some as an example of the degradation
of poetry in popular culture. As W. Hamilton Reid recognized in
1790, Smith’s sonnets appealed to a large readership because of their
simplicity; calling the sonnet “the mode of writing that has attracted
the most of the public attention” in recent years, Reid writes that
Smith’s success proves that “the more simple these [sonnets] are in
their construction, the longer they will please” (24). He also stresses
122 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

that the skill required to compose the legitimate sonnet is “thrown


away upon the many; for, as long as the multitude in another respect,
will prefer an English or Scots tune to an Italian air or finale, so long
will the common ear prefer the simple sonnet, viz. that composed of
three stanzas of alternate rhimes [sic] and a couplet” (24). Although
Reid claims to intend no “derogation” of Smith’s genius, his essay on
“unlettered genius” does impugn at the very least the literary tastes
of contemporary readers who fail to appreciate the skill required in
the composition of more difficult kinds of poetry.
As her full title suggests, Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon directly
engages the debate over the merits of the legitimate and the illegiti-
mate sonnet forms. As early as 1794, the Critical Review complained
that, since the prodigious success of Smith and her scores of imita-
tors, “we begin to be almost satiated with sonnets” (Rev. of Sonnets
114). In response, in 1796 Robinson strategically positions herself as
an exceptional poet and her sequence as following the examples of
Petrarch and of Milton—not of Smith. Her remarkable preface cen-
sures the “modern sonnet” popularized by Smith as facile and hack-
neyed. Echoing the eighteenth-century distaste for the Shakespearean
or illegitimate sonnet, Robinson writes that this form, “concluding
with two lines, winding up the sentiment of the whole, confines the
poet’s fancy, and frequently occasions an abrupt termination of a
beautiful and interesting picture” (1: 320). Like Milton before her
and Wordsworth after her, Robinson objects to the concluding cou-
plet but also to the hard closure of a single sonnet. Because the form
may resist this hard closure, she recognizes the expansive potential
afforded by the legitimate sonnet for “a series of sketches” that form
“a complete and connected story” (1: 320). But what Robinson is
most invested in is the assertion of poetic superiority explicit in her
adoption of a form “so seldom attempted in the English language”—
the legitimate sonnet, as mastered by Milton. Robinson provides
Milton’s sonnet “To the Nightingale,” first published in his 1645
collection, as a significant precedent by which to measure her own
achievement. She cannily selects a sonnet by Milton that will remind
her readers of how hackneyed the nightingale topos had become after
150 years, and thus also of Smith’s several sonnets that employ it.11
Moreover, in order to assert her own “classical” legitimacy, she must
denounce the popular form:

To enumerate the variety of authors who have written sonnets of all


descriptions, would be endless; indeed few of them deserve notice: and
where, among the heterogeneous mass of insipid and laboured efforts,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 123

sometimes a bright gem sheds lustre on the page of poesy, it scarcely


excites attention, owing to the disrepute in which sonnets are fallen.
(1: 321)

Robinson hearkens back to Samuel Johnson’s definition of the son-


net as having a “particular rule” and his qualification that the form
“has not been used by any man of eminence since Milton.” Here,
she cites in a footnote Smith’s opinion that the legitimate sonnet is
“ill calculated for our language” but, without comment of her own,
pairs it with William Kendall’s assertion that legitimate sonnets
“assert their superiority over those tasteless and inartificial produc-
tions, which assume the name”; that is, illegitimate sonnets, such as
those by Smith. As the most successful contemporary composer of
sonnets, Smith was Robinson’s chief competitor for the Petrarchan
laurel. Robinson, without explicitly condemning Smith, exploits the
weakness she perceives in Smith’s claim to poetic legitimacy, thereby
implicitly asserting her own prowess in order to take the prize away
from a fellow female poet. With such a move, Robinson, like the other
women writers in her Monthly Magazine essay, is also “ardent in the
pursuit of fame”; she, however, displays none of the solidarity she calls
for there. Her strategy is to assert the extreme difficulty of the legiti-
mate sonnet and her own intrepidity in following “that path, which,
even the best poets have thought it dangerous to tread” (1: 322);
she intervenes in a specifically masculinist tradition by appropriating
the mantle of legitimacy. Robinson believed sonnet writing to be a
rigorous test of poetic skill, so the rules must be enforced in order
to pass the test legitimately. She observes that “sonnets are so com-
mon, for every rhapsody of rhyme, from six lines to sixty comes under
that denomination, that the eye frequently turns from this species of
poem with disgust,” adding that “every school-boy, every romantic
scribbler, thinks a sonnet a task of little difficulty.” This is the reason,
according to Robinson, that magazines and newspapers abound with
“the non-descript ephemera from the heated brains of self-important
poetasters, all ushered into notice under the appellation of SONNET!”
(1: 322). She thus intends for her preface to distinguish her latest and
most ambitious literary work from ephemeral popular culture, such as
much of her own previous work.
Robinson understood that she had to demonstrate mastery of a dif-
ficult form in an ambitious project in order to achieve the Petrarchan
“wreath of fame”; like Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
after her, Robinson chose the legitimate sonnet. This mastery is what
Anna Seward calls “the Sonnet’s claim.” In opposition to Smith, both
124 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Robinson and Seward see the legitimate sonnet as a promise of fame


for the poet who is skillful enough to meet its demands.12 Accordingly,
Robinson represents herself in the preface to Sappho and Phaon as the
defender of the sonnet from the degradation of illegitimate practices—
“that chaos of dissipated pursuits which has too long been growing
like an overwhelming shadow”—from those who would undermine
its dignity, and from those poetasters guilty of “idleness” and formal
“profligacy” (1: 322). Robinson writes, “I confess myself such an
enthusiastic votary of the Muse, that any innovation which seems to
threaten even the least of her established rights, makes me tremble”
(1: 322). But her preface also expresses Robinson’s disappointment
in her own career, complaining that her contemporary moment is, on
the whole, culturally degenerate. She argues that “in those centuries
when the poets’ laurels have been most generously fostered in Britain,
the minds and manners of the natives have been most polished and
enlightened” (1: 323). This complaint is a thinly veiled justification
of her poetic talents and of her own sense of entitlement. Despite her
incipient radicalism, the poet longs for the days of aristocratic patron-
age as preferable to the vicissitudes of commercial publication. She
laments that fame comes too late for many worthy poets who “were,
when living, suffered to languish, and even to perish, in obscure pov-
erty” (1: 323). She offers as a counterexample Petrarch, who enjoyed
fame while he was alive:

Petrarch was crowned with laurels, the noblest diadem, in the Capitol
of Rome: his admirers were liberal, his contemporaries were just; and
his name will stand upon record, with the united and honourable testi-
mony of his own talents and the generosity of his country. (1: 323–4)

Not even Milton enjoyed such contemporary eminence, and Robinson


sees no one among her peers enjoying such success. Her culture’s fail-
ure to recognize poetic excellence is “a national disgrace”; she asserts
that “there are both POETS and P HILOSOPHERS, now living in Britain,
who, had they been born in any other clime, would have been hon-
oured with the proudest distinctions, and immortalized to the latest
posterity” (1: 324). Robinson may intend an oblique reference to her
new friend Godwin as among the living philosophers neglected by
the public, but as far as those neglected poets are concerned, she is of
course identifying herself.
As she claims legitimacy for herself as a poet by writing sonnets,
Robinson appears to offer a gesture of solidarity to her poetic sisters
who have their own claims to make. She pays tribute to her “illustrious
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 125

countrywomen; who, unpatronized by courts, and unprotected by


the powerful, persevere in the paths of literature, and ennoble them-
selves by the un-perishable lustre of MENTAL PRE-EMINENCE !” (386).
This is the essential message of Robinson’s formal choice and why
she wanted to make it so forcefully—to show that she can stand on
an equal footing with male poets. But, in typical fashion, Robinson
neglects to identify any of these “illustrious countrywomen.” Despite
her indictment in the preface of the literary sexism of her own coun-
try and age, she is unwilling to share the Petrarchan laurel with
Charlotte Smith or Anna Seward, who, in 1796, were the only serious
competitors for it and who also happened to be women. She writes
that “the liberal education of the Greeks was such, as inspired them
with an unprejudiced enthusiasm for works of genius: and that when
they paid adoration to Sappho, they idolized the MUSE, and not the
WOMAN” (389). The Greeks, she believed, were enlightened enough
to see beyond gender stereotypes and appreciate literature by women
on an equal plane with that written by men; this was the appreciation
she wanted for herself, but she was not willing to extend it to her fel-
low female poets.
Robinson published Sappho and Phaon under her own name
because this project required singularity in order to fulfill its pursuit of
poetic legitimacy. Sappho and Phaon is, after, all about the pre-eminent
woman poet while it inflects the form associated with the pre-eminent
man poet. The goal is to unite her own name with those of Sappho
and Petrarch. She employs Petrarchan form in the name of the arche-
typal female poet as a means of subverting the tradition, in which the
male poet sublimates his sexual desire for an unattainable female object
of desire as poetic immortality; and, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning
would later do, Robinson chooses to do so in a sequence of forty-four
perfectly legitimate sonnets to show, in the most gendered sense pos-
sible, how she has mastered that tradition. Sexual politics aside, if there
is a poetics of sonnet writing, Robinson and Seward have articulated it
as well as anyone. The sonnet, more so than any form other than the
epic, its formal inverse, is always an allusion to every other poem of its
kind ever written. The sonnets of the English Renaissance, for instance,
particularly those of Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, and Shakespeare—even
the Holy Sonnets of Donne—are always about Petrarch, his Laura, and
his laurel, regardless of whatever else they have to say. After Petrarch,
sonneteers tend to approach the form with an eye toward immortal-
ity: As Shakespeare writes, at the end of his famous and “illegitimate”
“Sonnet 18,” (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)—conclud-
ing epigrammatically—“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, /
126 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” “This” is of course the
sonnet, and Robinson understood the conceit.13

Sapphic Petrarch, Petrarchan Sappho


For her ambitious assertion of poetic legitimacy in the Petrarchan
sonnet, Robinson chose the familiar story of the Lesbian poet Sappho
and her doomed love for Phaon. Because of her own history of disas-
trous liaisons, Robinson certainly expected her readers to perceive
an identification on her part with the tale of the passionate love of
a woman poet for a man who eventually abandons her. Sappho and
Phaon, as her readers soon would recognize, is autobiographical in
some respects: Robinson’s long-time relationship with Tarleton was
at the time of writing in its final throes, and they would part ways
shortly after its publication. More important, Robinson’s Sappho and
Phaon is her most carefully crafted poetic achievement, designed to
portray “the human mind, enlightened by the most exquisite talents,
yet yielding to the destructive controul of ungovernable passions”
(1: 324). Robinson’s formal and intertextual choices demonstrate an
intentional refashioning of what it means for her to be the modern
Sappho. The rhetoric of her preface helps her to assert her poetic cre-
dentials, but the primary way for Robinson to direct the reception
of herself is through poetic form. Sappho and Phaon is Robinson’s
attempt to assert masculine authority over her poetry and her rep-
utation. If she is going to be the English Sappho, in other words,
Robinson wants to make sure that it is on her terms. Those terms,
however, paradoxically are borrowed, defined by Petrarch and Ovid
more than they are by Sappho. In Sappho and Phaon, Robinson
uses the figure of Sappho and the form of the Petrarchan sonnet
to reinstate a heteroerotic poetics that is not so much gendered as it
is sexed—practically a Wollstonecraftian move. In doing so, she re-
legitimizes the lyric voice that the Ovidian “Sapho to Phaon” silences,
and normalizes Sappho’s sexuality through Petrarch’s form. This is
where my reading of the sequence most differs from McGann’s in
The Poetics of Sensibility. Where he seeks to reclaim Sappho and Phaon
as “a central document” in the tradition of Sensibility (94), I see
Robinson attempting to overwrite the image of a feminized and sen-
sible Petrarch in late eighteenth-century popular culture with a mas-
culine, heteroerotic denunciation of the destructive emotions that she
associates with her namesake, Sappho, the pre-eminent woman poet.
In both the preface and the sequence proper, Robinson orders a
network of literary association and poetic intertextuality. In addition to
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 127

Petrarch, Robinson negotiates with such authors as Longinus, Ovid,


Spenser, Edmund Waller, Milton, Ambrose Philips, Joseph Addison,
Collins, Cowper, William Kendall, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, and
Pope—an illustrious list of men, most of whom she cites in her preface.
Again, the book only glances obliquely at Charlotte Smith’s “illegiti-
mate” sonnet practices. In addition to her claim to poetic legitimacy
through the Petrarchan sonnet, Robinson was careful to demonstrate
that her account of Sappho was learned. Robinson derived most of her
prefatory remarks on Sappho from Addison’s three Spectator papers on
Sappho (1711) and William Beaumont’s 1790 English translation of
Barthélemy’s Le Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (1788). Robinson
also may have consulted the work of Francis Fawkes, whose “Life of
Sappho” and translations were republished in 1795, around the time
Robinson began working on her sequence, in A Complete Edition of
the Poets of Great Britain.14 Despite her occasional Latin citations,
Robinson’s primary source for the narrative, key phrases, and atten-
dant imagery of Sappho and Phaon is Pope’s translation of the Latin
“Sapho to Phaon,” which was discovered in the fifteenth century and
presumed to be one of Ovid’s Heroides. Although some scholars today
dispute Ovid’s authorship, neither Pope nor Robinson doubted its
authenticity. While engaging the Petrarchan sonnet and that tradition,
Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon also involves the Ovidian heroic epistle
and its formal associations, if not strictly its formal properties.
To ventriloquize Sappho, Robinson invokes not only these two
masculine traditions but also the ways they voice male and female sex-
ual desire, thereby placing them in dialogue.15 The Petrarchan sonnet
traditionally expresses the male poet’s desire for an objectified woman,
while the Ovidian heroic epistle traditionally expresses a female char-
acter’s desire for an absent male lover. In addition to using Pope’s
“Sapho to Phaon” for her series of Petrarchan sonnets, Robinson
had also previously associated Petrarch with the Ovidian tradition in
her 1791 volume, which first earned her the sobriquet “the English
Sappho.” In her long poem “Petrarch to Laura,” she writes from the
male poet’s perspective—an apparent reversal of poetic subjectivity
given the revelation of “Laura” and “Laura Maria” as avatars of the
poet Mary Robinson. “Petrarch to Laura” surprisingly is neither a
sonnet nor a sequence of sonnets but an imitation of Pope’s Eloisa to
Abelard, the work that probably had the most influence on Robinson’s
poetry.16 Pope’s heroic epistle is his modernization of Ovid’s Heroides,
in which Ovid ventriloquizes famous women from Greek and Roman
history. Pope makes the medieval Eloisa his heroine, while Robinson
makes the medieval Petrarch hers, using the conventions of Ovid’s
128 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

form to place the prevailing figure of poetic masculinity in the female


epistolary position. To clarify, Robinson’s “Petrarch to Laura” is mod-
eled on Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, which is Pope’s modernization of
Ovid’s heroic epistles, the Heroides; in her poem, Robinson takes a
Petrarchan subject out of its original form, the sonnet, and formally
recasts that subject in light of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard. By contrast,
Sappho and Phaon is adapted from the Ovidian heroic epistle “Sapho
to Phaon,” translated by Pope, which conveys the final history of the
pre-eminent lyric and female poet, Sappho; Robinson formally recasts
this subject in Petrarchan form, the sonnet. So, why voice Petrarch’s
feelings for Laura in a form that is more commonly associated with
Ovid and Pope? Much of Robinson’s poetry explores the ethos of love
and sex; the themes and strategies prevalent in “Petrarch to Laura”
make themselves felt in Sappho and Phaon. In “Petrarch to Laura,”
Robinson wants to obliterate the supposed chastity of Petrarch’s rela-
tionship with Laura through complex formal allusion.
One of the most important features of Ovid’s Heroides is that the
very textuality of the epistolary form has a metonymic relationship to
the physical intimacy the heroine has shared with her lover or hus-
band. Recognizing this, Pope, after having translated in his youth
the Ovidian “Sappho to Phaon,” built his Eloisa to Abelard on the
same model of sexual knowledge. Robinson understood well the bit-
ter irony of Eloisa’s comment on the “eternal sunshine of the spotless
mind”—a kind of bliss-in-ignorance only the “blameless Vestal” can
enjoy, and she refers to that particular line in several of her poems.
Robinson’s “Petrarch to Laura” positions Petrarch as Eloisa, strug-
gling with his carnal passion, because, as a post- Sensibility writer,
Robinson simply cannot believe in the power of a passion that
remains physically unconsummated. She rejects a portrayal of in
morte Petrarchism, where the poet is sustained ultimately by agape
rather than eros. Robinson’s in vita Petrarchism hypersexualizes the
lover, while at the same time feminizing him as an Ovidian heroine.
The vision Robinson’s Petrarch receives of Laura at the end of the
poem only intensifies his erotic desire for her:

I fast, I pray, and yet no comfort find;


Heaven on my lips, but hell within my mind!
I feel THEE ever on my heated brain;
I weep, I sigh, I supplicate in vain! (1: 157; 301–4)

The erotics of the poem emerge from a confluence of several factors.


First, there is a Protestant subtext that finds the Catholic requirement
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 129

of priestly celibacy unnatural: Petrarch took minor orders that did


not require celibacy but, like Abelard, he had to remain unmar-
ried in case he were to advance in the church as a priest. Moreover,
Robinson’s pro-Revolutionary politics at this time likely inform the
anti-clerical implications of Petrarch’s supposed impropriety. Finally,
Robinson’s source was, instead of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Susannah
Dobson’s adaptation of the Abbé de Sade’s biography of Petrarch, in
which Dobson disapproves of the vehemence of Petrarch’s passion for
a married woman. For Robinson that is the crux of the story. And
while Sade felt that even virgins could read Petrarch—instead of, say,
Sappho, Catullus, Ovid—without blushing (Zuccato 158), the same
cannot be said of Robinson’s overheated “Petrarch to Laura.”
In this way, “Petrarch to Laura” may be a parody of Petrarchism
revived for the Age of Sensibility as another version of Werterism.
And it expresses the same kind of ludic eroticism that characterizes
the Della Crusca–Anna Matilda exchange in an exaggerated, one
might say melodramatic, and facetious pastiche of Sensibility tropes.
When Robinson’s Petrarch, for instance, complains that the woods of
Vaucluse no longer please him, his language is infused with frustrated
sexual desire:

No more for ME your sunny banks shall pour


In purple tides ripe Autumn’s luscious store;
No more for ME your lust’rous tints shall glow,
Your forests wave, your silv’ry channels flow;
Yet ‘midst your heav’n my wounded breast shall crave
One narrow cell, my SOLACE and my GR AVE. (1: 151; 25–30)

Although ostensibly about nature, these lines are so sensual that


they practically figure a blazon of Laura’s body. This is made all the
more apparent when Petrarch writes to Laura the reason he feels this
way: “Where, L AUR A, shall I turn, what balsam find / To soothe
the throbbings of my fev’rish mind?” (41–2). Robinson reasserts
the erotic Petrarch “wild with passion, madd’ning with remorse”
(49), but she does so by associating him intertextually with the car-
nal heroine of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard. Robinson’s Petrarch is car-
nal, too—profoundly unsatisfied and sexually frustrated as religious
devotion fails to match the imagined and imaginative pleasures of
erotic fantasy. Robinson delights in the double entendre and ambi-
guity of that frustration: she writes, “Fancy bade my frantic mind
explore, / Those scenes of holy joy I taste no more” (59–60). The
heroic epistle, as Ovid’s Heroides and Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard had
130 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

established, affords the reclamation of the lovers’ physical intimacy


through the love letter; so, even as Robinson’s Petrarch and Pope’s
Eloisa struggle to renounce passion, they indulge in form as erotic
fantasy. Petrarch recalls his first sight of Laura, as Robinson enjoys
the erotic ambiguity of Petrarchan paradox: “Oft as the cross her
snowy fingers press’d, / Her auburn tresses veil’d her spotless breast”
(1: 152; 69–70). Perhaps recalling the cross with which Pope’s
Belinda adorns her breasts, Robinson shows her Petrarch fascinated
by the recollection of the image and all that it suggests, and the actual
knowledge it may recall to himself and his lover. Observing her reli-
gious devotion—her “conscious rapture”—initially ignites his desire
to know her in a different way. Through the allusion to Ovid and
Pope, Robinson is able to wink at her reader without explicitly deny-
ing or confirming the chastity of Petrarch’s relationship with Laura:
to tease is more the point.
Robinson’s portrayal of Petrarch is also irreverent. As he variously
pleads with Laura for physical consummation or angelic instruction,
Robinson’s Petrarch echoes Pope’s Eloisa and her “rebel passion”
throughout—a phrase that appears in both poems (Robinson 109,
Pope 26). And this Petrarch is excited not by Laura’s virginity but by
her “matron’s purity”—another Petrarchan oxymoron, perhaps—that
makes her a “brighter IDOL” than even “the sacred Virgin’s form,”
thus emphasizing again his desire for Laura’s sexualized body over
the veneration of the forms of Catholicism. These references perform
an allusion to Eloisa’s matronliness—that is, her sexual experience—
and her unwillingness to forget it. Robinson’s epigraph for “Petrarch
to Laura” comes directly from the passage in Pope’s poem (lines
197–200) where Eloisa refuses to renounce her carnal knowledge of
her lover:

Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,


How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain, do all things, but forget.

Robinson coyly selects four lines from Eloisa to Abelard that appear
between the most sexually suggestive parts of Pope’s poem. Just prior
to this passage, Eloisa confesses her longing for the physical intimacy
she shared with Abelard: “I view my crime, but kindle at the view, /
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new” (185–6). Refusing to deny her
sexual self, she asks, “How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense?”
(191). And, then, after the lines that constitute Robinson’s epigraph,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 131

Eloisa exclaims, in the famous line, “How happy is the blameless


vestal’s lot!” (207). In this context, Eloisa’s description of virginal
innocence—“Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”—is ironic: sex-
ual ignorance, in other words, is bliss, while renouncing known plea-
sure is psychic torture. The allusiveness of Robinson’s poem to Pope’s
and Ovid’s poems creates this subtext of known sexual pleasures that
reverberates throughout her Petrarch’s epistle.
In “Petrarch to Laura” Robinson thus places the pre-eminent male
poet in the traditionally feminized subject position of the Ovidian
heroic epistle. As Gillian Beer has noted, “Heroic epistle takes as its
pre-condition the enforced passivity of women: formally and in nar-
rative the poems rely upon sequestration” (140). Robinson under-
stood this, so her “Petrarch to Laura” takes place during Petrarch’s
retirement but before Laura’s death. Her Petrarch essentially is Pope’s
Eloisa. Even his coveted laurel pales in comparison to his devotion to
Laura’s erotic allure, which is the source of his poetry:

When nations thron’d THY POET’s Fame to share,


And shouts of rapture fill’d the perfum’d air!
No flush’d delight from adulation caught,
No selfish joy with false ambition fraught
Could draw my prostrate soul from L OVE and THEE :
Still at THY shrine I bent the trembling knee! (1: 155; 231–6)

In effect, Robinson figuratively neutralizes (or neuters) her predeces-


sor’s genius, making his ambition subservient to his passion, his intel-
lect submissive to his emotions, and his “wreath of fame” contingent
upon the inspiration afforded him by a female figure whom Robinson
herself has overwritten with her poetic avatars—Laura and Laura
Maria. It is a figure of herself that animates this Petrarch, that, as she
has him write, “bade my verse with deathless glories shine” (242).
Laura is thus always the embodiment of poetic fame. Robinson’s fig-
uring is fundamentally ludic and self-reflexive because, of course, this
is literally true: Robinson’s Petrarch is her own creation, endowed
by her version of Laura. In this poem Petrarch becomes another ava-
tar. Demonstrating an incisive understanding of the heroic epistle,
Robinson performs a cross-gendering that mimics her significant pre-
cursors, Ovid and Pope. Like many male poets before her, Robinson
understood that the Ovidian tradition required a kind of formal
transvestitism, so she writes as the male erotic subject when she
chooses the heroic epistle, instead of writing as Laura; or, conversely,
she chooses the heroic epistle to write as Petrarch, instead of choosing
132 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the sonnet. Similarly, she opts for the sonnet when she takes on the
voice of the female poet Sappho.17
The formal and gendered allusiveness of both the heroic epistle and
the legitimate sonnet gains even greater resonance when Robinson
chooses to perform Sappho’s passion for Phaon via Petrarch’s tradition.
In “Petrarch to Laura,” Robinson’s formal choice suggests that she
intends a representation of Petrarch as a feminized figure of Sensibility,
along with Pope’s Eloisa and Goethe’s Werter. In her heroic epistle,
Robinson is not interested in performing a Petrarch capable of mas-
tering his passion, which is what the Canzoniere is mostly invested in
demonstrating, particularly in the sonnets that take place after Laura’s
death. Like Eloisa and Werter, this fictional Petrarch looks forward
to death as the end of his excessive sensibility. If her Petrarch is a
variation of Pope’s Eloisa, he is also a figuration of the eighteenth-
century Sappho, whose desperate passion and legendary suicide echoes
Werterism. Robinson’s portrayal of Petrarch in the heroic epistle asso-
ciates the male poet with the same kind of dangerous sensibility that
Robinson recognized in eighteenth-century portrayals of Sappho—
most significantly in the Ovidian poem translated by Pope that served
as Pope’s prototype for his own Eloisa to Abelard. In her preface to
Sappho and Phaon, Robinson paraphrases Addison’s complaint that
what remains of Sappho’s poetry is, in her words, “replete with such
fascinating beauties, and adorned with such a vivid glow of sensibility,
that, probably had they been preserved entire, it would have been dan-
gerous to have perused them” (1: 326). Addison was tactfully allud-
ing to Sappho’s supposed sexual liaisons with other women and thus
was grateful that more poetry depicting such passion did not survive.
Robinson elides the issue entirely, however, attributing the danger, not
to lasciviousness, but to the powerful authenticity of Sappho’s emo-
tion. Her poems, Robinson writes, “possessed none of the artificial
decorations of a feigned passion; they were the genuine effusions of a
supremely enlightened soul, laboring to subdue a fatal enchantment”
(1: 326). She acknowledges that Sappho’s poems are “too glowing for
the fastidious refinement of modern times,” referring to the language
of erotic desire that, she points out, the ancient Greeks could appreci-
ate regardless of the poet’s sex. But given the authenticity Robinson
ascribes to Sappho’s emotions, the irony of Sappho and Phaon is that the
sequence is itself artificial, carefully constructed in—as Sappho’s feel-
ings are mediated through—Petrarchan form. Robinson is able to keep
distance between her subject, Sappho, and her personal subjectivity.
By choosing Petrarch’s form as the vehicle for her Sappho’s pas-
sion, Robinson implies an affinity between Petrarch’s passions and
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 133

Sappho’s, as well as a contrast between the sexualization of their


respective literary reputations. Sappho is destroyed by her passion for
Phaon, a passion that ironically codifies the portrayal of Sappho as
monstrously oversexed, whereas Petrarch is sanctified by his passion
for Laura, a passion that ultimately transcends carnality and justifies
his fame. Just as she feminizes Petrarch through poetic form in her
earlier “Petrarch to Laura,” in Sappho and Phaon, she masculinizes
Sappho by strictly employing the legitimate or Petrarchan sonnet.
When she ventriloquizes Sappho, therefore, Robinson mediates that
poet’s voice through Petrarchan form but also, here again, through
the Ovidian Heroides and Pope’s language. So, Robinson’s Sappho
and Phaon employs Petrarch and Ovid in almost diametrically oppo-
site ways from her “Petrarch to Laura”: in the earlier poem, she uses
Ovidian intertextuality to feminize the masculine Petrarch; in the
later sequence, she uses Ovidian intertextuality to masculinize her
perspective on the feminine Sappho.
Robinson, thus, reanimates the archetypical poetess via her own
adoption of a masculine poetic form. Her interest in doing so is evident
in an earlier “Sonnet to Lesbia,” which appeared three years before
in the Oracle on 5 October 1793. Importantly, signed “Sappho,” this
is Robinson’s first published legitimate sonnet; that is, the first of her
sonnets to have a strictly Petrarchan octave. Not part of a sequence,
this sonnet stands by itself as an adaptation of Sappho’s famous ode
praised by Longinus, translated in the eighteenth century by Ambrose
Philips and beginning, in that translation, “Blest as th’ immortal
Gods is he.”18 As we shall see, the blatant homoeroticism of Sappho’s
ode—the young man is “blest” because he gets to enjoy the erotic
propinquity of a young woman whom Sappho’s speaker also desires—
troubled eighteenth-century readers more than it did Longinus. In
“Sonnet to Lesbia,” the poet writes as Sappho but with a contrary
purpose, eliding the homoerotic and adapting Sappho’s opening
line to read “FALSE is the YOUTH, who dares by THEE recline” (1:
214; 1). Whereas the original Sappho addresses a woman for whom
she feels almost inexpressible desire, Robinson’s Sappho addresses a
Lesbian girl (“Lesbia,” a name which later becomes a pseudonym)
in order to warn her that this man, who turns out to be Phaon, also
has seduced the speaker in the same manner she here observes. This
single sonnet introduces one of the major themes of the sequence
Sappho and Phaon: the debilitating influence of heteroerotic pas-
sion on the creativity of the woman poet. Here, just as she urges,
“fear him, LESBIA—fear him,” she admits her own hypocrisy and the
futility of her poetic expression: “In vain for me the Muse unfolds
134 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

her store, / Love’s radiant scenes are changed to scenes of Care”


(5, 9–10). The poem concludes with the Sappho avatar fixed in the
static hopelessness of despair, even as the poet Robinson completes
her first legitimate sonnet. This is the germ for the more ambitious
Sappho and Phaon. While claiming legitimacy through the sonnet,
she subverts the masculinist erotic tradition of the sonnet by instead
portraying a woman as a passionate sexual being rather than as an
unattainable and passive ideal. The male object of desire becomes just
that—an object, like so many of the women in Renaissance sonnets.
But the intertextuality of the poem and the history it invokes is far
more complicated than simply calling upon the Petrarchan muse.
While her preface praises and defends the historical Sappho, the
sequence builds upon and develops an image of Sappho that the poem
ultimately must renounce. Directly rejecting the “too glowing” and
“genuine effusions” that Robinson attributes to the original Sappho,
her “Sonnet Introductory” proposes a contrary aesthetic of measured
eloquence and chastity that she performs in the legitimate sonnet:

FAVOUR’D by Heav’n are those, ordain’d to taste


The bliss supreme that kindles fancy’s fire;
Whose magic fingers sweep the muses’ lyre,
In varying cadence, eloquently chaste!
Well may the mind, with tuneful numbers grac’d,
To Fame’s immortal attributes aspire,
Above the treach’rous spells of low desire,
That wound the sense, by vulgar joys debas’d. (1: 329; 1–8)

In praising the craft of the poet, Robinson emphasizes the literal


performance of poetic composition, the fixing into form the “bliss
supreme that kindles fancy’s fire”—that is, poetic inspiration—that
requires mastery of the instrument, the lyre, the metonym of lyric
poetry. Although she employs the familiar trope of the poetic muse,
the “magic figures” are manifestly figurative, for Robinson’s diction
stresses the techniques involved in writing poetry the construction
of varied cadences, the “chaste” and artful selection of poetic lan-
guage, and the ability to express words and ideas in metrical form,
or “tuneful numbers.” The thoughts of the mind itself are thus mea-
sured, ordered, and rational as they are articulated in verse by the
skillful poet, a process not unlike Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected
in tranquility” and his poetics of restraint and regulation through
meter. Having achieved this mastery, the poet is justified in seek-
ing the “wreath of fame,” but only if he or she is able to transcend
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 135

sexual passion—“the treach’rous spells of low desire” and its “vulgar


joys,” which “wound” and “debase” “the sense,” or reason. Formally,
Robinson demonstrates her mastery of the legitimate sonnet by con-
structing a perfectly Petrarchan octave in which to introduce the first
part of the series’ theme: worthy poets maintain control of their pas-
sions just as they do of their forms, and so through formal discipline,
they earn fame.
Turning here at the volta, Robinson explains the second part of
the theme so that the “introductory” sonnet demonstrates the unity
and formal propriety that she associates with emotional continence.
Moreover, the poem concludes according to the criteria for the legiti-
mate sonnet, adhering to the rhyme scheme so difficult to manage
in English, with only four rhymes in a total of fourteen lines. As the
octave asserts the gifts bestowed by the Muse on the poet, the sestet
attests to the benefit the poet’s talent apportions to the rest of generic
humankind:

For thou, blest POESY! with godlike pow’rs


To calm the miseries of man, wert giv’n;
When passion rends, and hopeless love devours,
By mem’ry goaded, and by frenzy driv’n,
’Tis thine to guide him ‘midst Elysian bow’rs,
And show his fainting soul,—a glimpse of Heav’n. (9–14)

But the course of the sequence rarely leads Robinson’s Sappho to such
divine visions, calming the lover’s burning passion; in fact, most of the
sonnets depict rending passion and devouring hopelessness, culmi-
nating finally in suicide. The imputation as the sequence progresses is
that “blest Poesy” has failed to provide solace for Robinson’s Sappho.
Because this figure is allegorical, the failure ultimately is Sappho’s.
Robinson positions herself as a poet-narrator who is far above the
earth-bound passions of her degenerating subject.
Love in Sappho and Phaon is a terminal but preventable disease.
Sappho’s mistake is allowing herself to become so dependent on a
man’s love that she has lost both her reason as well as her poetical
powers, and the discipline and temperateness necessary for literary
art. Erotic love is the subject of lyric poetry, but it must not over-
whelm the reason and discipline required to produce the art. As the
opening sonnet asserts, lyric prowess consists in the subordination of
passion to poetical reasoning. By framing the sequence with an appar-
ently androgynous poet-narrator—androgynous in the sense that
the authorial figure of Mrs. Robinson merges with those of Ovid,
136 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Pope, and Petrarch—who interpolates commentary as well, Robinson


adheres to a fictional frame whereby the sonnets contained therein
are not supposed to be productions from the pen of Sappho, but the
sonnets that the poet-character Sappho would have written had she
not lost the use of her poetic faculties.
More devastating than unrequited love itself is its effect on the
woman poet who remains creatively debilitated, in contrast to the
male sonneteers of the Petrarchan tradition who draw inspiration,
poetic power, and fame from their courtly amours. Robinson, as a
kind of meta-poet, remains in formal control of the lyric voice. In
this way, Robinson also engages her Ovidian source as translated by
Pope. The epigraph to Sappho and Phaon—“Love taught my tears
in sadder notes to flow, / And tun’d my heart to elegies of woe”—
comes from the opening of Pope’s “Sapho to Phaon,” which, as in the
original Latin text, is about the poet-character’s formal choice. The
epistle opens with Sappho suspecting that Phaon will not recognize
her handwriting and thus her authorship of the document, especially
since it is in heroic couplets, or, in Latin, elegiac couplets (alternating
hexameter and pentameter lines), instead of her characteristic lyric
form, her eponymous Sapphic meter:

SAY, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,


Can Phaon’s eyes forget his Sapho’s hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers chuse,
The Lute neglected, and the Lyric muse;
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
And tun’d my heart to elegies of woe. (1–8)

The Ovidian Sappho acknowledges that Phaon is accustomed to receiv-


ing love lyrics not epistolary poetry, the meter of which Ovid himself
innovated for the Amores as an erotic alternative to the heroic meter
(pairs of hexameters) of epic poetry. Writing in English, Pope converts
Ovid’s elegiac couplets to rhyming ones. The point is that Ovid’s Sappho
chooses a new meter, “new numbers,” for her epistle. None of Ovid’s
canonical Heroides acknowledge that they are verse compositions, but
none of them are supposedly the compositions of famous writers; so
the author of this one, Ovid or an imitator, opens with an acknowledg-
ment of the formal choice that the poet-character Sappho presumably
has made. Indeed, the Ovidian source stresses that Sappho chooses
the elegiac measure characteristic of Ovid specifically because her pas-
sion for Phaon has crippled her ability to write lyric poetry: Robinson
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 137

uses Pope’s translation as her epigraph for the entire sequence, “Love
taught my tears in sadder notes to flow, / And tun’d my heart to ele-
gies of woe” (7–8). But this is ironic because the Ovidian source makes
a clear distinction between elegiac measure and lyric form. Sappho
writes, “Ask not the cause that I new numbers chuse” because Phaon
knows full well the effect his rejection has had on her. Sappho’s choice
becomes a rhetorical appeal that demonstrates her debility, the degen-
eration of her lyric voice, previously articulated through lyric forms—
one of which, the Sapphic quatrain, bears her name.
Importantly, Robinson restores the lyric form by adapting the
Ovidian epistle to the Petrarchan sonnet. But the narrative frame
mediates the lyric voice of the poet-character by figuratively present-
ing each sonnet as the production of the poet-narrator, even when the
voice is supposedly Sappho’s. McGann makes an important point that
the alteration in the title from “Sappho to Phaon” to Sappho and Phaon
puts Sappho “in a larger context of understanding”—in symmetrical
balance with her lover, Phaon (108). However, I contend that Phaon
remains in Robinson’s adaptation as much a cipher as he is in Pope’s
translation—perhaps even more so. The Petrarchan tradition requires a
subjective-objective binary that Robinson clearly maintains. In this way,
Robinson also asserts her performative authority as the poet-maker and
Petrarchan ventriloquist of Sapphic passion. Before Sappho, the poet-
character, speaks in the poem in Sonnet IV, the poet-narrator provides
the introductory sonnet plus a curious pair of poems, Sonnets II and
III, that offer competing allegories of poetics. The first one describes
the Temple of Chastity, an immaculate classical structure dedicated to
the repudiation of sexual passion; here, “Pale vestals kneel the Goddess
to adore, / While Love, his arrows broke, retires forlorn” (1: 329;
13–4). These vestals have transcended earthly passion, difficult as that
progress has been. The “steps of spotless marble” that lead to the altar
are covered with “deathless roses, arm’d with many a thorn” and the
“frozen floor” is “Studded with tear-drops petrified by scorn” (9–12).
The vestals—not necessarily virgins—have chosen this path and thus
have defeated Cupid who “retires forlorn.” In Sonnet III, in contrast
to the Temple of Chastity, Robinson, alluding perhaps to Spenser, pres-
ents the Bower of Pleasure, where “sportive Fawns,” or fauns, sug-
gesting, of course, satyrs, and “dimpled Loves,” or Cupids, indulge
in sensual pleasures. Here “witching beauty greets the ravish’d sight”
and is “More gentle than the arbitress of night,” or the moon, a sym-
bol of chastity. This sonnet concludes with a comparison between the
two locations: “HERE, laughing Cupids bathe the bosom’s wound; /
THERE, tyrant passion finds a glorious tomb!” (1: 330; 13–4). The
138 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poem at this point might appear to be ambivalent, but the comparison


suggests that the Bower of Pleasure only provides a restoration destined
to be undone, while the Temple of Chastity memorializes the triumph
over the “tyrant passion”; only in this sense is the tomb “glorious.”
This is how Robinson chooses to preface the introduction of the poet-
character Sappho—by presenting her with an explicit choice and then,
given the outcome, making an implicit judgment of that choice.
This is why Sappho has lost her lyric voice. She first speaks in a
series of rhetorical questions that make evident the poet-character’s
choice between chastity and pleasure. When she gazes on Phaon’s
“beauteous eyes,” Sappho asks, “Why does each thought in wild dis-
order stray? / Why does each fainting faculty decay, / And my chill’d
breast in throbbing tumults rise?” (1: 330; 2–4). Robinson echoes
the original “Sappho’s Ode,” as it was called, in which the female
speaker confesses the confusion engendered by sexual desire in simi-
lar language to that with which Robinson introduces her Sappho. As
Longinus’s first-century treatise On the Sublime is the only source
for this, Sappho’s most famous poem, Robinson chooses to pres-
ent Sappho’s expression through a complex network of masculine
agents—Longinus, Philips, Ovid, Pope—that culminates Robinson’s
own mediation of that voice in the Petrarchan sonnet sequence.
Robinson thereby ensures that Sappho cannot speak directly or sing
in her own lyric voice: “Mute, on the ground my Lyre neglected
lies, / The Muse forgot, and lost the melting lay” (5–6). Sappho and
Phaon is clearly dialogic, but it is also a dialogue of sorts between the
poet-narrator and the poet-character. In Sonnet V, the poet-narrator
responds to Sappho’s predicament with her own choice between
chastity and pleasure, which, as she makes clear, is a choice between
reason and love: “O! How can L OVE exulting Reason quell!” (1:
330; 1). This is not a question but an exclamatory comment on the
preceding sonnet, for Sonnet IV, in Sappho’s voice, clearly shows
how Love exults in its triumph over Reason. Love, the poet-narrator
asserts, is degenerative: “How fades each nobler passion from his
gaze!” (2). Sappho, in succumbing to erotic love, has thwarted her
potential, for one of these “nobler passions” is “Fame, that cherishes
the Poet’s lays, / That fame, ill-fated Sappho lov’d so well” (3–4).
So, in neglecting her lyre, Sappho, moreover, has forfeited her claim
to poetic fame and, implicitly, has surrendered it to the poet-narrator
of Sappho and Phaon, who asserts it herself in thirty-nine succeeding
sonnets.
Where the original is rhetorical, Robinson’s adaptation is polemi-
cal. She has, furthermore, a personal investment in rejecting a
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 139

Petrarchan subjectivity conditioned by literature of Sensibility. Like


Gertrude, the heroine of her novel The False Friend, Sappho is “the
victim of sensibility”—that novel’s final and fatal words (6: 228,
408). Sappho and Phaon does not finally validate Sappho’s excessive
sensibility, nor does it corroborate the portrayal of Petrarch as an
icon of Sensibility, in contrast to what Robinson does with the fig-
ure of Petrarch in “Petrarch to Laura.” The dangers of sensibility
are a consistent theme in Robinson’s later work. Indeed, Robinson’s
subsequent novels—Walsingham, The False Friend, and The Natural
Daughter—all develop around the dangers of “excessive sensibility,”
a phrase she frequently employs. Her male protagonist Walsingham,
for instance, blames his misfortunes on “the miseries of sensibility”
(5: 7). But, like Jane Austen, Robinson understood well that sensibil-
ity posed particular dangers to women: as Gertrude writes in a letter
to a friend, “We are the victims of our own sensibility”; and echo-
ing the exultation of Love over Reason in Sappho and Phaon, this
character also exclaims, “Oh, sensibility! thou curse to woman! thou
bane of all our hopes, thou source of exultation to our tyrant man!”
(6: 225, 327). Robinson, moreover, considered herself in this light;
as she writes in the Memoirs, “every event of my life has more or less
been marked by the progressive evils of a too acute sensibility” (7:
196). According to Robinson’s recounting of the narrative, Sappho
suffers a similar fate, but Robinson’s deployment of the poet-narrator
reclaims the female subjectivity from the degenerative impulse of
“too acute sensibility.”
Still, this is not, strictly speaking, tragedy. As a sonnet sequence,
Sappho and Phaon recovers the playfulness of English Renaissance
poets’ engagements with Petrarch’s tradition, with a similar spirit
of irony and touches of (self-)parody. The brilliance of Robinson’s
sequence is that she consistently demonstrates her ability to perform
a multivalent poetics that is both lascivious and disapproving, while
also dexterously avoiding the implication of herself in Sappho’s fate.
In other words, Robinson knows that paeans to chastity and rea-
son do not make for successful sonnets, regardless of the potential
risks. Erotic tension is finally fundamental to the Petrarchan tra-
dition. Sappho and Phaon is practically a psychomachia of internal
conflict between reason and passion, but it is also the sexiest poem
Robinson ever wrote because the psychosexual always predominates.
The sequence manages nonetheless to maintain an ironic or fre-
quently ambiguous detachment from its subject, even as it variously
disapproves of or sympathizes with Sappho’s dilemma. Even when
Robinson voices Sappho, she distances herself from the poet-character.
140 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

For example, Sonnet VI, presumably in Sappho’s voice, asks if love


really is nothing more than sexual obsession:

IS it to love, to fix the tender gaze,


To hide the timid blush, and steal away;
To shun the busy world, and waste the day
In some rude mountain’s solitary maze?
Is it to chant one name in ceaseless lays,
To hear no words that other tongues can say,
To watch the pale moon’s melancholy ray,
To chide in fondness, and in folly praise?
Is it to pour th’ involuntary sigh,
To dream of bliss, and wake new pangs to prove;
To talk, in fancy, with the speaking eye,
Then start with jealousy, and wildly rove;
Is it to loathe the light, and wish to die?
For these I feel,—and feel that they are Love. (1: 330–1)

Playfully and knowingly dealing in Petrarchan contraries, this sonnet


possesses an articulation of the lover’s quandary as ironic yet sympa-
thetic any of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sonnets. Robinson’s sonnet
implicitly admits that the experience the poet-character describes is
contrary to any reasonable or ethical definition of love, but concludes
nonetheless that the lover’s feelings subjectively validate it. Lovers do
feel this way, while their observers recognize the dangers of defining
love in such solipsistic terms. The next sonnet, Sonnet VII, responds
immediately with an almost comic reversal in its opening line:

COME, Reason, come! each nerve rebellious bind,


Lull the fierce tempest of my fev’rish soul;
Come, with the magic of thy meek controul,
And check the wayward wand’rings of my mind. . . . (1: 331; 1–4)

Robinson understands that such vicissitudes are endemic to the


English Petrarchan tradition and that the sonnet-lover scoffs at
such nostrums. The sonnet-reader, of course, is more interested in
the “wayward wand’rings” of the erotic imagination—although the
attempt to restrain passion is certainly also amusing, as the neo-
Petrarchans Sidney, Drayton, and Daniel in particular demonstrate.
As Sidney writes in Sonnet 71 of Astrophil and Stella, “But ‘Ah,’
Desire still cries, ‘Give me some food!’ ”
Robinson’s treatment of Sappho is professedly heteronormative. Even
if she were unable to read the original Latin, which is more explicit,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 141

Robinson would have found a fair share of supposedly deviant sexual-


ity in Pope’s translation. In other words, Robinson knew that Sappho
reputedly had sex with women. In her preface, she quotes at some length
from Barthélemy’s Anacharsis, in which the Abbé presents himself in
dialogue with a citizen of Mytilene who defends Sappho from “the
infamous manners with which she is privately reproached” (Barthélemy
2: 62). Robinson closes her “Account of Sappho” with the explana-
tion that, because of “the extreme sensibility” of the ancient Greeks,
“amongst them the most innocent connections often borrow the impas-
sioned language of love” (1: 326–7; Barthélemy 2: 63). Robinson’s quo-
tation omits, however, three sentences that compare Sappho’s passion for
girls to that of Socrates for his male pupils; she suppresses a comparison
that she perceived would be invidious to her subject and detrimental to
the success of her volume. Robinson also quotes Barthélemy’s citizen’s
imputation that other women envious of “her superiority” maliciously
used the “warmth in her expressions” against her and thus destroyed
her reputation. Robinson no doubt took some self-righteous pleasure
in quoting this view, as she herself felt similarly persecuted. Moreover,
even though Pope elides the original poem’s catalog of Sappho’s former
female lovers, his translation attributes Sappho’s lyrical prowess to her
homoerotic passion; in other words, in “Sapho to Phaon,” she can no
longer write lyric poetry because her heterosexual desire has incapaci-
tated those powers and so she writes this letter instead of a lyric poem.
Pope’s Sappho writes, “No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
/ Once the dear objects of my guilty love, All other loves are lost in
only thine” (17–9). Literally, the original of line 19 reads “what once
belonged to many girls is yours alone” (Knox 284). The Ovidian Sappho
repeatedly boasts of her poetic fame—“the wide world resounds with
Sapho’s praise” (32)—but she admits that, having forsaken her erotic
desire for other women in favor of a man, she no longer can write the
love poetry for which she is famous:

Alas! the Muses now no more inspire,


Untun’d my lute, and silent is my lyre,
My languid numbers have forgot to flow,
And fancy sinks beneath a weight of woe.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
Themes of my verse, and objects of my flames,
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling string:
My Phaon’s fled, and I those arts resign,
(Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)
142 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Return, fair youth, return, and bring along


Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:
Absent from thee, the Poet’s flame expires;
But ah! how fiercely burn the lover’s fires? (228–41)

The original poem and Pope’s translation have more than a touch of
misogynistic satire in this representation of Sappho’s poetic prowess as
inextricable from what most readers would have considered her lasciv-
iousness. When Robinson writes in her preface that Ovid’s and Pope’s
“portraits, however beautifully finished, are replete with shades,
tending rather to depreciate than to adorn the Grecian Poetess,” she
refers to the Ovidian source’s emphasis on Sappho’s homoerotic pas-
sion as being more conducive to lyric composition and on the crip-
pling effects of Sappho’s sexual desire for Phaon (1: 324). As the final
couplet in this passage suggests, Sappho cannot be both a success-
ful poet and a heterosexual lover. In the heteronormative context of
Ovid’s Heroides, Sappho’s current predicament is punishment for her
transgressive deviance and her fame is thus compromised.
Robinson’s Sappho, likewise, is only geographically a Lesbian
(like anyone from Lesbos), but Robinson does not deny Sappho’s
unruly and destructive passion. While Robinson’s sequence is more
circumspect, as a “series of legitimate sonnets,” it is just as sexually
and poetically normative. Indeed, there a few literary traditions more
heteronormative than the Petrarchan one. And Robinson performs
many of the stock conventions, but with some surprising variations.
Sonnet X, for example, contains the requisite blazon, following
such examples as Spenser’s Sonnet 15 of the Amoretti or Sidney’s
Sonnet 77 of Astrophil and Stella. After cataloging Phaon’s physical
features, the sonnet concludes with a surprising subversion of the
eternizing conceit, emphasizing mortality and imaging the decay of
Phaon’s physical self (1: 332). In Sonnet XIII, Robinson’s Sappho
“endeavours to fascinate him” and blazons herself by describing the
“Sylvan girls” dressing her for a meeting with Phaon; she chooses
to dress modestly, “elegantly chaste,” to tempt him all the more
through the suggestion of her body; as she says, “Love scorns the
nymph in wanton trappings drest; And charms the most concealed,
are doubly grac’d” (1: 333; 12–4). Recalling the Renaissance pun
on death for orgasm, in Sonnet XV, Robinson uses the image of the
flowers on which Sappho imagines Phaon sleeping to express her
desire, crying, “O! happy buds! to kiss his burning breast, / And
die, beneath the lustre of his eyes!” (334; 3–4). As in the Ovidian
original, Robinson’s Sappho has realized the dream: in both poems,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 143

Sappho seeks to remind Phaon of their erotic past. The Ovidian


Sappho, however, uses the memory to seduce Phaon through sen-
sual language, describing their sexual chemistry (see lines 49–62).
Robinson’s Sappho is more elegiac in recalling their sexual history
and her address is more an apostrophic lament in the absence of her
lover than an attempt at correspondence:

WHY art thou chang’d? O Phaon! tell me why?


Love flies reproach, when passion feels decay;
Or, I would paint the raptures of that day,
When, in sweet converse, mingling sigh with sigh,
I mark’d the graceful languor of thine eye
As on a shady bank entranc’d we lay. . . . (XVIII; 1: 335; 1–6)

While Pope’s translation shows Sappho promising repeated plea-


sure, Robinson’s sonnet has her missing the afterglow, the erotic
intimacy that transcends the “decay” of sexual desire. Despite the
sexually charged imagery of the sequence, Robinson understands
that the masculine Petrarchan tradition is absorbed with the thrill
of unconsummated desire, of possessing an unattainable object of
desire; from a woman’s perspective, her sonnet sequence asserts, the
challenge is maintaining possession of the loved one. Here, for exam-
ple, Sappho’s Lesbian girls are not playthings but heteroerotic-poetic
proxies, “tuneful maids” sent to tempt Phaon with her poems, which
she reduces to agents of seduction rather than vehicles for fame. “No
more the Lyre its magic can impart,” she claims, “Though wak’d to
sound, with more than mortal grace!” Her desire is expressed in her
poetry, even as it diminishes her claim to poetic fame. Robinson’s
Sappho thus devalues her erotic poetry as having no purpose beyond
the procurement of physical pleasure:

Go, tuneful maids, go bid my Phaon prove


That passion mocks the empty boast of fame;
Tell him no joys are sweet, but joys of love,
Melting the soul, and thrilling all the frame!
Oh! may th’ ecstatic thought his bosom move,
And sighs of rapture fan the blush of shame! (Sonnet VIII; 1: 331; 9–14)

She is thus willing to compromise her poetic fame in order to sexu-


ally arouse her lover. But she also acknowledges the risk in indulging
physical pleasure because such pursuits inevitably will lead Phaon to
forsake her for new objects. “Then how can she his vagrant heart
detain, / Whose Lyre throbs only to the touch of Love!” (Sonnet
144 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

IX; 332; 13–4). Sappho’s sexual obsession thus threatens not only
to drive Phaon away, but also to impair fatally her reputation as a
woman poet. Even as she asserts her own poetic legitimacy with the
sequence, Robinson also proclaims the ineffectuality and ephemer-
ality of Sappho’s lyric expressions—her actual compositions—which
Robinson figures as existing outside of her sequence. Accordingly, she
alludes to the fact that Sappho’s writing failed to be as carefully pre-
served as that of other ancients because lyric poetry was not as highly
valued as, say, epic or dramatic works. As Robinson writes, and as her
Sappho acknowledges, “Folly’s torch consumes the wreath of fame”
(XI; 332; 7). The “wreath of fame” is wasted upon Sappho because
she lacks the fortitude to reject passion, sensibility, and feeling. She
lacks, moreover, a benignant Laura-figure to foster transcendence.
Robinson means to avoid the original Sappho’s fate—in more ways
than one. In the Ovidian source, Sappho’s lyric prowess derives from
her homoerotic passion; in Sappho and Phaon, it is erotic passion itself
that has enervated, debilitated her lyric creativity. Her Sappho rejects
reason in favor of sexual fantasy and thus succumbs to the tyranny of
love (Sonnet XVII; 1: 334–5). The poet-character also expects severe
judgment from other women: “nymphs beware,” she warns, “how ye
profane my name, / Nor blame my weakness, till like me ye love!”
(335; 13–4). Although Phaon’s rejection is her personal misfor-
tune, Sappho expects women ultimately to precipitate the ruin of her
reputation. Playing upon the stereotypes of the emotional woman,
Robinson’s Sappho becomes the “frantic minstrel,” who is contrasted
against the rational voice of the poet-narrator, who suggests that love
in the hands of a woman poet is destined to ruin not only the woman
who falls prey to it, but the woman poet who is inspired by it:

On the bleak rock your frantic minstrel stands,


Each task forgot, save that, to sigh and weep;
In vain the strings her burning fingers sweep,
No more her touch, the Grecian Lyre commands! (XIX; 335; 5–8)

Sappho succumbs to feeling, but Robinson suggests that such a sur-


render to dependent love is devastating to women and to women poets.
Her love conquers her reason and thus endangers her poetic status.
Previously, before he rejects her love, Phaon, not the Lesbian women,
inspired her poetry, which the poet-character wrongly presumes is a
synecdoche for her totality in Phaon’s eyes:

CAN’ST thou forget, O! Idol of my Soul!


Thy Sappho’s voice, her form, her dulcet Lyre!
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 145

That melting ev’ry thought to fond desire,


Bade sweet delirium o’er thy senses roll? (XXV; 337; 1–4)

Again, in this sonnet as in others, the subordination of her poetic


talents to her erotic desires in the service of winning her lover only
diminishes her status as a poet, a destiny she foresees figured in “A
blighted laurel, and a mould’ring tomb” (338; 14). To make mat-
ters worse for her Sappho, Robinson adds a plot point not located in
the original Ovidian source but from Verri’s novel, The Adventures
of Sappho, which portrays Sappho as a desperate stalker: inflamed
by jealousy and desire, Sappho decides to follow Phaon to Sicily
(XXIX; 339). She bids farewell to Lesbos: “Lesbos, these eyes shall
meet thy sands no more: / I fly, to seek my Lover, or my Grave!”
(XXX; 339; 14).
Only toward the end of the sequence does Robinson attempt to
engage Sappho’s actual poetry, preferring to deal instead with the
mythos surrounding the poet. Sonnets XXXII and XXXIV are the
only sonnets in Robinson’s sequence that allude to Sappho’s poems.
As Robinson’s footnote, “Vide Sappho’s Ode,” points out, the first
of these two sonnets directly refers to the poem that has most dis-
concerted attempts to normalize the erotic ethos of Sappho’s poetry.
Sonnet XXXII describes Robinson’s Sappho, on her journey to Sicily,
dreaming of finding there a rival for Phaon’s love. Opening with a
paraphrase of Ambrose Philips’ translation, the sonnet addresses the
imagined rival:

BLEST as the Gods! Sicilian Maid is he,


The youth whose soul thy yielding graces charm;
Who bound, O! thraldom sweet! by beauty’s arm,
In idle dalliance fondly sports with thee!
Blest as the Gods! that iv’ry throne to see,
Throbbing with transports, tender, timid, warm!
While round thy fragrant lips zephyrs swarm!
As op’ning buds attract the wand’ring Bee! (1: 340; 1–8)19

Robinson must adapt Sappho’s poem to her heteroerotic plot. Sappho’s


original ode famously describes her almost debilitating envy combined
with sexual arousal at observing the female object of desire in the com-
pany of that woman’s male lover. In his discussion of Sappho’s ode,
Addison is clearly made uncomfortable by its content; presenting Philips’
translation, he awkwardly offers the following advice: “Whatever might
have been the Occasion of this Ode, the English Reader will enter into
the Beauties of it, if he supposes it to have been written in the Person
of a Lover sitting by his Mistress.” Clearly demarcating the parameters
146 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

of appropriate English eroticism—as opposed to that of the Greeks—


Addison blatantly encourages the willful misreading of the poem.
Robinson’s solution to the problem of Sappho’s homoeroticism is far
more ingenious: she transforms the original ode (as she would have
known it) by projecting Sappho’s desire for Phaon onto the Sicilian
Maid she imagines Phaon seducing. In the octave, with bitter irony, the
poet-character praises the Sicilian maid for her conquest, only to point
out with mocking instruction that it is Phaon who really is in control
of the situation. She visualizes the maid’s sexual “transports” occa-
sioned by his attentions toward her, which she notes are centered upon
her breasts, “that iv’ry throne,” and, with a mildly surprising double
entendre, compares her erotic sighs and sexualized body to the flower
that attracts the bee. The octave concludes thus with imagery not in
Sappho’s original poem, and nearly consummates a mixed metaphor
in the suggestion of the bee’s sting, harmless to the flower itself but
potentially painful to the observer of this particular scene.
This sonnet performs a number of impressive feats. It does not
merely paraphrase Philips’ translation in sonnet form, which Robinson
would have found easy enough to do since the sixteen-line poem is
of a similar length. Robinson’s formal intentions, however, preclude
doing so: She captures the gist of the original ode for the octave,
but wants to turn the sonnet at the volta for the dialectical purpose
she understands to be essential to a legitimate sonnet. The sonnet
concludes,

Yet, short is youthful passion’s fervid hour;


Soon, shall another clasp the beauteous boy;
Soon, shall a rival prove, in that gay bow’r,
The pleasing torture of excessive joy!
The Bee flies sicken’d from the sweetest flow’r;
The lightning’s shaft but dazzles to destroy! (9–14)

In the original poem, Sappho’s female speaker transposes her desire


for the woman through her praise of the man who is fortunate enough
to enjoy the pleasures the speaker envies. Robinson’s adaptation is a
dark triangulation that ultimately replaces desire with anger, jealousy,
and the destruction of both Sappho and the maid. The figure of the
bee turns out to be a red herring; its sting replaced with the far more
destructive yet similarly phallic “lightning’s shaft” that “dazzles to
destroy.” Obviously, Robinson has mastered Petrarchan flourishes
such as the oxymoronic “pleasing torture,” but these resonances are
made all the more profound through the medium of Petrarch’s form,
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 147

which is a formal triangulation itself. Just as the male Phaon is the


conduit for the feeling expressed, so is Petrarch’s masculine form the
conduit for that expression.
Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon normalizes the sexuality of the
pre-eminent woman poet through the legitimacy of the sonnet.20
Robinson means to restore the lyric voice that the heroic epistle
form denies, but does so only through the most masculine of all lyric
forms—the Petrarchan sonnet. Robinson’s sequence shows the poet
mediating Sappho’s voice through an aggressively masculine poetics
until it becomes only the faintest echo, if it sounds at all. The other
sonnet that engages Sappho’s poetry, Sonnet XXXIV, “Sappho’s
Prayer to Venus,” only generally alludes to the Greek poet’s “Ode to
Aphrodite,” which Philips and Fawkes both translate as “Hymn to
Venus.” As Joan DeJean points out, seventeenth-century commen-
tators supposed Sappho to have composed this poem as a plea for
the goddess’s intercession in returning Phaon to her (140). Fawkes’s
translation even inserts Phaon’s name, although it does not appear
in the original. In Sappho’s poem, Venus/Aphrodite promises to
grant her wish. In Robinson’s sonnet, Sappho addresses the goddess
credentialed as her devoted poet, having earned her favor as “the
Lesbian Muse” (1: 341; 1). Although Sappho climactically and fatally
dedicates herself to love, eschewing reason, the goddess here does
not reply; instead, the next sonnet, Sonnet XXXV, only confirms
Phaon’s rejection of her and thus re-engages the tragic Ovidian nar-
rative. Moreover, Sappho’s prayer to Venus closes with the image of
Sappho surrendering her laurel wreath to Love, who is “immortal as
the Nine!” and thus replaces them, the nine muses, with love (14).
Sappho has made her choice and thus, in Robinson’s version, undoes
her claim as “the Tenth Muse.” With this gesture, Sappho rejects
Petrarchan transcendence, and Robinson’s disapprobation resounds.
Predictably perhaps, Sappho and Phaon concludes with Robinson’s
promotion of herself ahead of Sappho, to whose name she has been
bound. The entire work is a gesture of self-canonization. As the
sequence affirms throughout, Sappho’s weakness disqualifies her
from achieving the Petrarchan laurel. And thus Robinson’s masculine
assertions of poetic legitimacy, fortitude, and judgment reverberate
particularly at the end. Where the Ovidian Sappho hesitates, awaiting
a reply from Phaon, Robinson’s Sappho is a confirmed and unrepen-
tant suicide. Before she receives the vision of the Leucadian rock,
Robinson’s Sappho imagines the muse of lyric poetry, Erato, confer-
ring his blessing upon her, restoring at her death her immortal fame.
But even this aspiration degenerates at the end of Sonnet XXXIX to
148 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

a recrimination against Phaon’s heartlessness coupled with the self-


pitying hope that, in his grief, he will at last be sorry (1: 342–3). At
the end of the sequence, instead of choosing the Temple of Chastity
over the Bower of Pleasure, Sappho speciously reproaches Phaon for
directing her to the Leucadian rock, where she will either perish or
emerge from the waters below, cured of the destructive passion he
has provoked. In case of the former, she hopes he will remember with
regret her “fatal fondness” and her “peerless fame” (XLII; 344; 4).
If she survives, she promises to rededicate her poetry to Phoebus,
or Apollo, instead of to Venus. But again, this is fallacious reason-
ing, contingent as it is upon Phaon’s rejection of her and a magical
restoration of her poetic faculties. The Ovidian Sappho demonstrates
a similar line of thought that Robinson’s sequence ultimately cannot
endorse. In the penultimate sonnet, Sonnet XLIII, Robinson shows
Sappho atop the “dizzy precipice” where the poet-character reflects
upon the possibility that she may be able to emerge from the waters
below a better poet, if she survives,

So shall this glowing, palpitating soul,


Welcome returning Reason’s placid beam,
While o’er my breast the waves Lethean roll,
To calm rebellious Fancy’s fev’rish dream;
Then shall my Lyre disdain love’s dread control,
And loftier passions, prompt the loftier theme! (344; 9–14)

Thus the poet-narrator’s voice resurfaces, for the sonnet sequence is


finally Robinson’s denunciation of “love’s dread control” and reap-
pointment of her own lyre to “loftier” themes than unrequited love,
because she realizes the stereotypical constraints love poetry enforces
upon the woman poet and the inevitable circumscription of her fame.
For Robinson, the story of Sappho’s end finally is a myth of poetic
dissolution. Given Robinson’s penchant for writing monodies and
elegiac laments, the conclusive sonnet of Sappho and Phaon surpris-
ingly is no requiem for the actual, historical Sappho, who may or may
not have perished in the waters off Cape Lefkada. The sonnet is more
interested in itself as a comment upon Robinson’s entire project: the
personified muse sheds a tear of sympathy but “Bids the light Sylph
capricious Fancy fly” (1: 344; 3). That is to say, the narrative of the
poem, despite the tragedy of Sappho’s death, is nothing more than the
product of “capricious Fancy”; the true import of the poem resides
in the poet’s ability to transform her source material into a more pro-
found rumination, as “Reflection pours the deep and frequent sigh, /
O’er the dark scroll of human destiny” (6–7). That destiny, Robinson
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 149

contends, is bound up with “gaudy buds and wounding thorns”; that


is, factitious pleasure and inevitable disappointment (8). Still, the
poem concludes with an epitome that surpasses the archetypal “poet-
ess”; that is, the poet Robinson herself and her assertion of ascen-
dancy above the material provided to her not only by Ovid’s text, but
by the problematical example of Sappho’s fame. Finally, Robinson’s
Sappho is the public image of herself that she must publicly renounce.
For Robinson, the claim to poetic fame involves more than virtuoso
performances—although that is a large part of it—but a profession
of virtue itself. The final sestet of Sappho and Phaon is an invocation,
but not to the muse:

O! Sky-born VIRTUE ! sacred is thy name!


And though mysterious Fate, with frown severe,
Oft decorates thy brows with wreaths of Fame,
Bespangled o’er with sorrow’s chilling tear!
Yet shalt thou more than mortal raptures claim,
The brightest planet of th’ ETHERNAL SPHERE ! (1: 345; 9–14)

Robinson clings not only to the image of the “wreath of Fame” as


a poetic trope, but also to the very phrase itself as a mantra, as if its
repeated utterance could ensure her immortality. But here she claims
it merely as an adjunct of virtue. Robinson clearly demonstrates the
formal rigor of her performance, but the discipline required of her
in the composition of Sappho and Phaon is also more than a little
penitential. Her final assessment of Sappho—at least of the poet-
character—is not, therefore, favorable. The Greek Sappho gave up
everything for “mortal raptures.” The English Sappho, hampered as
she had been by the Perdita epithet, here seeks something more.
On 17 October 1796, just as Sappho and Phaon went on sale,
Boaden printed in the Oracle an attempt to rehabilitate the Perdita
epithet on behalf of Robinson—if she did not write the puff herself:

Those who through ignorance suppose, that they stigmatize Mrs.


ROBINSON when they call her The Perditta, are not aware that she
acquired the name, by the eclat with which she performed one of the
most AMIABLE characters that SHAKESPEARE ever wrote. Mrs. SIDDONS
or Miss FARREN would not blush at being called the Hermione or
the Lady Teazle; and Mrs. ROBINSON ought to feel proud when her
Perditta is remembered. (17 October 1796)

This item may be little more than public relations because every-
one reading the column would remember exactly who Florizel was
150 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

in the allegory of gossip: the Prince had gotten legally married to


Caroline of Brunswick just the year before, and within a year had
separated from her. Just a few weeks previous to Boaden’s puff, in his
New Brighton Guide, John Williams had attacked Robinson while
defending the Prince of Wales in the aftermath of his separation from
his wife, Caroline, presuming the forthcoming Sappho and Phaon to
be an unflattering roman à clef. Writing as “Anthony Pasquin,” his
long-standing pseudonym, Williams finds it incredulous that “Mrs.
Robinson, or the Perdita, or the lame Sappho, or what you will,
would in the moment that she is receiving an annuity of five hun-
dred pounds from the bounty of the Prince, unite in the interested
cabal who labor to tarnish his good name” (53). 21 Given the fact
that Robinson’s annuity and the reason she received it was public
knowledge, Boaden was sensitive to how easy it was for detractors to
undermine his friend’s poetic ambitions. Two days before the above
puff, in a column headed “The British Sapho,” Boaden promoted
the forthcoming publication of Sappho and Phaon but with some
admitted anxiety that Robinson’s assertion of her sonnets as “legiti-
mate” was surely going to provoke bawdy and malicious jokes at
Robinson’s expense (15 October 1796). Soon the public would learn
that Tarleton, too, had discarded “poor Perdita”—but not before
malicious reports in the Evening Mail and the Times suggested that
he was enjoying the sexual favors of both “the ‘Perdita’ and her fair
daughter” (11, 13 October 1797). Sure enough, once Tarleton had
abandoned Robinson for the much younger Susan Bertie, the public
identification of Robinson with Sappho became problematic once
more as the sequence came to epitomize Robinson’s personal life yet
again. Almost two years after the publication of Sappho and Phaon,
the Times could not resist invoking the sequence in order to embar-
rass Robinson and gratuitously to humiliate her daughter:

General TARLETON has been very much surprised at the title of legiti-
mate Sonnets given by the Modern Sappho to her new poetical rhap-
sodies. The General aptly observed, that he never knew her to favour
her friends or the Public with any productions of that nature before.
(24 July 1798)

Such a comment, which is not really about her poetry, reveals the
continued difficulty she had with decoupling her poetic self from her
former infamy.
Poetic forms have semantic resonances that make statements inde-
pendent of a poem’s vocabulary. Recognizing Shelley’s “Ode to the
Th e E ngl ish S a ppho 151

West Wind” as a homostrophic ode consisting of five terza rima


sonnets—and thus a nonce form—carries a wealth of significance
in its formal allusions to Horace, Dante, and Petrarch. Robinson’s
poetry works in similar ways. She understood that her practice in
Sappho and Phaon was greatly informed by the simple love lyric asso-
ciated with Sappho and endlessly replicated in newspaper columns;
by the heroic epistle innovated by Ovid and revived by Pope in Eloisa
to Abelard; and by the sonnet devised by Petrarch, sanctified by
Milton, and popularized by Charlotte Smith’s “illegitimate” varia-
tions. She understood, moreover, that Pope’s heroic epistle was imi-
tated ad nauseam throughout the eighteenth century. Her “Petrarch
to Laura” probably was inspired by a popular anonymous volume
of modern takes on the Ovidian form that included similarly cross-
dressed epistles—Abelard to Eloisa, Leonora to Tasso, Ovid to Julia,
Spring, and Other Poems (1788). This book, moreover, was dedicated
to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Robinson’s occasional patron.
But Robinson’s use of the heroic epistle for “Petrarch to Laura” and
her adaptation of Pope’s translation of Ovid for her sonnet sequence
Sappho and Phaon is also informed by the fact that the Perdita scan-
dal had been poetically reified in a burlesque of the Heroides called
Poetical Epistle from Florizel to Perdita: with Perdita’s Answer (1785),
which imitates the epistles exchanged between Paris and Helen in
Ovid’s collection. She appropriated the form for her own purposes.
So, even when Robinson’s imagery or diction appears faulty or defi-
cient, the form of any given poem is likely hugely significant. Sappho
and Phaon is the best example of this and is her definitive accomplish-
ment in the sonnet. She wrote only a handful of sonnets after this
sequence, including a political sonnet signed “T. B.” (Tabitha Bramble)
(1: 361) and a “Burlesque Sonnet” parodying Della Crusca, who
appears as Mr. Doleful (who is not “merry”) in her novel Walsingham
(5: 203). These engage traditions other than the strictly Petrarchan
one. In the final year of her life, while working for Daniel Stuart at
the Morning Post, Robinson returned to the regular composition of
lyric poems because she was obligated to provide at least two poems a
week; as chief poetry correspondent, she drew upon her facility with
lyric forms, which Stuart could easily accommodate in the columns
of the newspaper. Several of these are light lyrics and Anacreontics
on disappointed love that Robinson signed “Sappho.” One of these,
“Sappho, to Phaon,” revisits the subject of her sonnet sequence but in
tetrameters reminiscent of Della Crusca’s poetry (2: 56–7). Although
many of these later Sappho poems, such as “Sappho—To Night” (2:
50–1), “A Lover’s Vow” (68–9), “A Cure for Love” (80–1), “Sappho,
152 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

to the Aspin Tree” (85–6), are in unique fixed lyric forms, Robinson
never again associates Sappho with the sonnet, legitimate or other-
wise. She did revive her Laura avatar directly to engage Petrarch and
to echo the theme of Sappho and Phaon—the destructive nature of
erotic passion. In “Sonnet. Laura to Petrarch,” which is appropri-
ately a legitimate one, Laura urges Petrarch to “check thy wand’rings,
weary and forlorn, / And find, in FRIENDSHIP’S balm, SICK PASSION’S
CURE” (2: 73; 13–4). After Sappho and Phaon, however, this son-
net is superfluous; Robinson likely wrote it to fulfill her two-poems-
per-week commitment. Fortunately, Robinson also understood that a
series of sonnets, however legitimate, advocating “friendship’s balm”
would be insipid. But this sonnet serves as a reminder that the poet
Mrs. Robinson, at least in her mind, had mastered both Petrarch and
Sappho.
Chapter 4

St ua r t ’s L au r e at e s I: Poe t s a n d
Pol i t ic s P e r pl e x t

T he tension between love and reason explored in Sappho and Phaon


had already been dramatized by Robinson the previous year as an alle-
gorical dialogue in a poem that first appeared on 12 February 1795
in the Tory newspaper the True Briton, edited by Robinson’s friend
John Taylor. In this earlier poem, Love boasts of his power to subvert
Reason’s “pedant rules,” and to delude and subjugate the emotions of
mere mortals. Love’s power is factitiously carnivalesque: he is able to
“make the wisest fools” and “to Idiots lend a gleam of wit” (4, 7); he
makes “Deformity appear / More beauteous than the day!” (9–10).
Reason admits of this truth but, just as capricious, retorts that Love
succeeds only “where I refuse my aid” (19). In the end, though,
Reason wins. While the poem is not explicitly political, in its context
within the pages of the True Briton it reads as fundamentally conser-
vative. Its promotion of maturity and sober wisdom accords with the
paper’s stance against reform and revolution. In February of 1795,
just months after Pitt’s suspension of habeas corpus, the execution of
Robespierre and the triumph of anti-Revolutionary sentiment, and
the acquittals of Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall for treason, Robinson’s
assertion of reason over delusive passionate enthusiasm is a particularly
safe position to maintain. On its own, the poem is obviously a precur-
sor to her later critiques of excessive sensibility, such as that made by
Sappho and Phaon as noted in the previous chapter. Robinson later
would reprint this poem in her novel The Natural Daughter as the
composition of her heroine, Martha Morley, who, Robinson writes,
is “not one of those romantic females who are led from the paths of
154 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

rationality by the phantoms of vanity and caprice” (7: 27). Martha is,
therefore, another countermodel to the overheated Sappho. And cer-
tainly Robinson’s repurposing of the poem from the True Briton in
this novel, a tale replete with radical political inflections, is also a rec-
lamation of her work from a paper whose politics Robinson would no
longer be able to countenance. The fate of Robinson’s friendship with
Taylor is unknown after 1794, but this telling lacuna suggests that it
may have at least cooled.1 Hester Davenport’s edition of Robinson’s
few surviving letters gives the impression that the radical Godwin
replaced Taylor as a correspondent and as her literary confidante,
although Robinson portrays Taylor favorably as the benevolent (and
apolitical) Mr. Optic in Walsingham. But the shift in network makes
sense, given what Taylor’s paper would come to represent.2 Before
the end of the year, in November of 1795, the True Briton sounded
the call for reactionary legislative measures, such as the suppression
of political gatherings, the imposition of harsher penalties for sedi-
tion, and the strengthening of laws regarding treason. By the end
of the year, the notorious “Two Bills” proposed by Lord Grenville
and Pitt (but opposed by Fox) were passed by Parliament. As John
Barrell points out, these laws—the Seditious Meetings Bill and the
Treasonable Practices Bill, also called the “Gagging Acts”—had
been advocated for by the True Briton, and earned “the full-hearted
support of the king” (Imagining 571). These bills were infamously
repressive measures that laid the cornerstones for what has come to
be known as Pitt’s Terror.
Around the time her “Love and Reason” poem appeared in the
True Briton, Robinson privately had begun to distance herself from
Treasury-supported newspapers. For two months in 1795, we find
Robinson again playing on both sides of the political fence. The afore-
mentioned poem appeared in February signed “Mrs. Robinson”; how-
ever, during the preceding month, Robinson had published a series
of four poems under a new pseudonym, “Portia,” in the Morning
Post, the paper that declared itself the most intractable enemy of the
government-subsidized publications—chief among them the True
Briton. Prior to this, no poem of hers had made its first appearance
in an opposition newspaper. With the publication of this series of
poems, Robinson uses a pseudonym she had not used previously in
order to launch a shift in her political allegiances. The “Portia” signa-
ture is short-lived and therefore does not become a full-fledged avatar;
Robinson does own up to it by reprinting two of the four poems from
this series, the sonnets “To Liberty” and “To Philanthropy,” in her
novel Angelina the following year. In addition to the drastic changes
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 155

in her political views, Robinson saw an opportunity to ally herself


with a new network. This new network shows Robinson committing
to a more radical or at least oppositional political stance and interact-
ing professionally, personally, and poetically with a younger set of
writers, including Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Such
connections would prove crucial to Robinson’s career as it moved into
a new phase and eventually drew to a close; they show her poetry
involved in a new intertextual network that pertains directly to the
rise of Romantic poetry.
Robinson’s five years with Stuart mirror her earlier years as Bell’s
laureate at the Oracle, particularly in the political and professional
networking evident during both periods. Stuart is not the mysterious
figure Bell is, however, so many more facets of Robinson’s business
relationship with Stuart are discernible. In July of 1795, at the age of
28, Daniel Stuart bought the Morning Post and officially took over
the management of it as editor and proprietor. Prior to this, despite
his youth, he had worked intermittently with the Morning Post as its
printer and as a writer and, briefly in 1788–9, as editor. Werkmeister
surmises that Stuart later edited the paper for two years during Lord
Lauderdale’s lease of the property before Stuart purchased it in 1795;
for, beginning on 9 July 1793, certain aspects of the paper nota-
bly changed, and it began promoting Lauderdale’s interests, which
included peace with France and reform of Parliament—interests
Stuart certainly shared (Newspaper 334–9). Stuart was an ardent
reformer, serving as deputy secretary for the Society of the Friends
of the People under his brother-in-law James Mackintosh. Stuart
also was an enthusiastic supporter of Paine (Hindle 68). Supporting
Werkmeister’s conjecture, in 22 July 1793, an editorial in the Morning
Post jabbed at “the unthinking Government Prints” and asserted the
independence of its principles: “The Public are alone our Patrons. –
We seek no favours from the Treasury. . . . Our own honest and inde-
pendent exertions we consider as the best claims to public favour.”
Under Stuart’s guidance, the Morning Post would go on to fiercely
oppose Pitt’s ministry, even defiantly adding “Taxed by Mr. Pitt”
to the flag of the paper, just beneath the price. In the final issue
of the Anti-Jacobin, which was established to counter the opposi-
tion papers, George Canning’s poem “The New Morality” associated
Stuart’s Morning Post with sedition and blasphemy, and attacked in
particular his stable of poets, Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lloyd, and
Charles Lamb (328–37; 9 July 1798). Unlike the Anti-Jacobin, which
lasted less than a year, Stuart’s Morning Post became hugely success-
ful. Stuart noted years later that the paper’s circulation was as low
156 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

as 350 copies per day when he purchased it; four years later, Stuart
was selling “upwards of 2,000” papers a day (“Newspaper” 579). By
the time Stuart sold it in 1803 for many times the amount he paid
for it, the Morning Post had helped launch not only Southey’s and
Coleridge’s careers but Wordsworth’s as well.
The Morning Post printed more poems by Robinson than did
any other paper. Most of these appeared after August of 1799, when
she replaced Southey as the paper’s chief poetry contributor, until
November of 1800, when she became fatally ill. During those final
fifteen months, Robinson revived her most prominent avatars; and,
like Southey before her, Robinson produced or otherwise procured
approximately two poems a week for Stuart—a rigorous program for
any poet. She began in January of 1795 with Portia, an avatar that
vanished after only a month.

Portia Pseudonymously
In 1736, Anne Ingram, Viscountess Howard anonymously pub-
lished a poetic riposte to Alexander Pope’s misogynistic “On the
Characters of Women.” Understandably mistaking Ingram for Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, Robinson admired the poem and quoted
it at length in her 1799 Letter to the Women of England (8: 148–9).
Although her “Portia” pseudonym certainly plays on both charac-
ters by that name in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and The Merchant of
Venice, Ingram’s acclamation of the historical Portia, wife of Brutus,
captures most precisely the significance of the name for the series
of four poems that constitute Robinson’s first contributions to the
Morning Post. Robinson’s quotation of Ingram’s poem concludes:

PORTIA , the glory of the female race;


PORTIA , more lovely in her mind than face;
Early inform’d by Truth’s unerring beam,
What to reject, what justly to esteem.
Taught by Philosophy, all moral good;
How to repel, in youth, th’ impetuous blood:
How ev’ry darling passion to subdue;
And Fame, through Reason’s avenues, pursue.
Of Cato born; to noble Brutus join’d;
Supreme in beauty, with a ROMAN MIND ! (8: 149)

These are the virtues that, as we have seen, Robinson’s Sappho rejects
at her peril but that Robinson’s sonnet sequence ultimately espouses.
The rational Portia is a counterpoint to the hysterical Sappho.
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 157

Certainly, Robinson’s references in the Letter point to a wide knowl-


edge of historical women. The pseudonym “Portia,” of course, also
acknowledges the theatrical history of the character, most particu-
larly Sarah Siddons’ famous portrayal of Portia in The Merchant of
Venice during the late 1780s. This Portia is one of Shakespeare’s most
intelligent heroines and delivers the “quality of mercy” speech in her
judgment of Shylock. Unlike readers and audiences today, Robinson
likely was not troubled by the character’s anti-Semitism. Eighteenth-
century audiences saw Portia as a figure associated with justice
and intelligence, who uses language to outwit Shylock and to save
Antonio from having to render the pound of flesh. Moreover, Portia
is a “breeches” role, for she disguises herself as a lawyer. Although
Robinson herself never played the character when she was an actress,
the persona resonates with her theatrical past. So, like most of her
avatars, it points obliquely at herself.
As she had done with Laura Maria for the Oracle, Robinson used
the “Portia” signature exclusively for the Morning Post. To match
the significations of the pseudonym and the political positions of the
paper, she designed the persona as a politically liberal, intellectually
rigorous, and superlatively feminine voice of reason and humanitar-
ian concern. It is her most exclusively political avatar. And she clearly
intended Portia to have longevity, albeit unrealized. Her first Portia
poem is her sonnet “To Liberty,” identified in the Morning Post as
“SONNET I” (10 January 1795); the sonnet “To Philanthropy” is
“SONNET II” (23 January 1795); this indicates they are part of a
series of sonnets that Robinson apparently abandoned—perhaps when
she decided to write Sappho and Phaon. These are formally “illegiti-
mate” sonnets, but they are fiercely incisive. After a year in which
Pitt’s suspension of habeas corpus allowed authorities to keep reform-
ers and radicals in prison without indicting them, and just weeks after
the conclusion of the treason trials, a sonnet in the Morning Post
praising Liberty as “Transcendent and sublime!” and as the “inmate”
of Truth is a bold but necessary statement for those who opposed
such repressive measures. It also impugns the authority of Pitt’s gov-
ernment in its tyranny at home and its conduct of the war abroad:

’Tis thine, where sanguinary Demons low’r


Amidst the thick’ning host to force thy way;
To quell the minions of oppressive pow’r,
And crush the vaunting NOTHINGS of a day! (1: 314; 9–12)

The poem concludes with an apocalyptic vision characteristic of the


mid-1790s: “Still shall the human mind thy name adore! / ’Till Chaos
158 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

reigns – and worlds shall be no more!” (13–4). The second sonnet,


“To Philanthropy,” is similarly polemical but more radical; another
allegorical apostrophe, this sonnet sets the principle of philanthropy
against the social distinctions among humankind, which Portia calls
a spurious “mummery of empty show.” In the spirit of philanthropy,
she argues, all “seek the same inevitable goal”—equality—because
we are each of us “Stung by distinctions, that from custom grow” (1:
316; 5–8). Five years later, Portia’s sonnet thus continues the refuta-
tion of Burke’s Reflections. But it also addresses racism and the aboli-
tion debate: Philanthropy knows that “The ETHIOP’S dusky brow,
CIRCASSIA’S rose, / Are but the varying tints of breathing clay!”
(10–1). Portia’s polemic is circuitous but powerful: The dichotomy
between the black Africans and the Circassians, who were thought
to be the original Caucasians and thus the epitome of white perfec-
tion, also alludes to the fact that the Circassian region was subject to
Russia’s imperial objectives. The invasion motif is powerfully reflex-
ive, applied as it is to the subjugated whites but, in the context of the
abolition debate, ultimately rerouted to remind the reader of exploited
Ethiopians. Robinson’s figurative language employs a human synec-
doche for the Ethiopian, but a nonhuman metaphor for the Circassian
that only indirectly suggests whiteness. Moreover, adapting Gray’s
oft-cited line “The paths of glory lead but to the grave” from Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard, Robinson employs it in the service
of her point about racial and social equality: “Life’s gilded pageant,
dazzling as it goes, / Stops at the sepulchre, and fades away, / To
let the BEGGAR and the PRINCE repose!” (12–4). Such leveling is
a consistent motif in Robinson’s Portia poems, but the contrast of
race is peculiar to the sonnet “To Philanthropy.” The issue of race
in this case thus also recalls Shakespeare’s Portia’s rejection of the
African Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, whose first line
in the play is “Mislike me not for my complexion” (2.1.1). When he
fails to select the right casket and thus fails to win Portia’s hand in
marriage, she dispenses with him, saying, “A gentle riddance. Draw
the curtains, go. / Let all of his complexion choose me so” (2.7.79).
While reading Portia’s blatant racism here in relation to her treatment
of Shylock is perhaps anachronistic, the character’s obvious distaste
for the idea of a black husband reverberates as an allusive counter-
point in Robinson’s Portia’s humanitarian sonnet. Just a few months
earlier William Wilberforce’s latest attempt to abolish the slave trade
had failed in the House of Commons. Robinson was acutely aware
of the issue because, in March of 1794, her lover, Tarleton, as MP
for Liverpool, voiced his opposition to abolition on the grounds that
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 159

it would devastate the local economy—as he had done in 1791 and


1792 (Oracle 8 March 1794). Moreover, Tarleton was suspected of
having help from Robinson herself in the writing of his speeches,
despite her own contrary views (Davenport 169).
The series of Portia poems are the most potentially controversial
political poems Robinson had published up to this point. This avatar
with all of its associations stands in stark contrast to Laura Maria at
the Oracle, which had been previously her most prominent avatar.
“St. James’s Street, on the Eighteenth of January, 1795” demon-
strates further Robinson’s cultivation of an urban and urbane ava-
tar for political commentary in a newspaper—her first attempt to do
so following the end of the Della Cruscan network: this particular
poem appeared in the Morning Post on the 21st of January—Queen
Charlotte’s birthday—just a few days after the date on the poem. It is
an explicit attack on the apathy of the privileged upper classes toward
the poor. Playing on the persona of Portia, each of these poems has a
direct political purpose and shows impressive rhetorical savvy. More
so than her previous avatars, Robinson’s Portia demonstrates her
understanding of the medium and its context, and of how a newspa-
per poem with an explicit political or social message ought to eschew
literary complexity, or what her critics occasionally called obscurity,
in favor of easy wit seasoned with sentiment and indignation; such
poetry ought to be consumable. In “St. James’s Street,” later titled
“The Birth-Day” in her 1806 Poetical Works, Robinson, characteristi-
cally clever, uses the specific urban setting—a fashionable thorough-
fare from Piccadilly to Pall Mall and St. James’ Palace—to contrast
the situations of the rich and the poor by creating the rhetorical illu-
sion of a dual space:

H ERE bounds the gaudy gilded chair,


Deck’d out with fringe and tassels gay;
The melancholy mourner, THERE,
Pursues her sad and painful way!
H ERE, guarded by a pompous train,
The pamper’d Countess glares along;
THERE, wrung by poverty and pain,
Pale Mis’ry mingles with the throng! (1: 314; 1–8)

And so the poem continues with the poet’s upbraiding of “H IGH


NAMES, adorning little Souls” who “Contemn the pang they never
know!” Robinson here anticipates by some sixty years the metaphor
central to Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, in which the two cities are
160 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

not merely London and Paris, but the separate worlds of the rich
and the poor coexisting in the same space. As Stephen C. Behrendt
asserts, this poem demonstrates Robinson’s “deliberate attempts to
destabilize the system by dramatizing for her readers the suffering of
the excluded under an established system of callous privilege” (British
55). The poem closes with the familiar trope of death as the great
equalizer, again from Gray’s Elegy:

“Take Physic Pomp!” let R EASON say,


“What can avail thy trappings rare?
The tomb shall close thy glitt’ring day!
The BEGGAR prove thy EQUAL , THERE !!” (1: 315; 41–4)

Robinson’s Portia here echoes Shakespeare’s Lear, who finds himself


homeless and destitute on the heath. Just before he enters the hovel
of Poor Tom (Edgar in disguise), Lear has an epiphany, addressing
those who still enjoy the luxury he no longer does:

Take physic, pomp;


Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just. (3.4.33–6)

Although the poem alludes to Lear’s plea for humanitarian relief for
the poor, we should not forget, however, how politically charged such
a sentiment was for the 1790s, particularly as Britain waged war with
revolutionary France: the poem’s ostensibly Christian conclusion con-
notes as well the obliteration of class distinctions—what conservatives
called “levelling,” a bogey used to combat Thomas Paine’s Rights of
Man and to frighten moderates with the fear that liberals and radicals
meant to subvert the English constitution and undo the fabric of civi-
lized society. One pamphlet, A Caution against the Levellers (1793),
insisted that those seeking reform would “overturn the government,
and put all property under confiscation, as they have done in France”
(qtd. in Claeys 88). In this way, Robinson’s Portia poems recall
William Hazlitt’s comment that Wordsworth’s “Muse . . . is a levelling
one. It proceeds on a principle of equality, and strives to reduce all
things to the same standard” (Lectures 253). But Portia’s charge is
more confrontational than Lear’s, coming from a political voice in an
opposition newspaper rather than from a desperate, dethroned, and
elderly monarch mourning the loss of his own power and influence.
Robinson understood that her readers, like media consumers today
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 161

who have partisan tastes for particular news providers, were liable
to engage only those ideas with which they already agreed, and she
played to that impulse.
Robinson’s move to the Morning Post shows that she sought affilia-
tion with a professional network with which her poetry would be more
compatible or that she wrote poetry that was more compatible with the
professional network with which she now worked. In either case, the
poetry is different. As Adriana Craciun has pointed out, Portia’s “St.
James’s Street” has an important relationship with Robinson’s previ-
ously published “Ode for the 18th of January, 1794” (British 66–9).
Both poems allude to the Queen’s birthday and criticize all such opu-
lent royal festivities during a period of war and widespread poverty.
The earlier poem, which Robinson published in the Oracle under
her own name, draws attention to the plight of the poor and to the
fruitless violence of war, admitting of the power of poetic “Fancy” to
“descry / The woe which PLEASURE’S TRIBE ne’er saw!” (1: 299; 41–2).
She imputes to herself the peculiar authority of the poet as seer and
prophet, and concludes with a prayer for renewed prosperity at home
and peace abroad. Although correct in its assessment of Robinson’s
politics, Craciun’s reading overlooks the fact that the ode appeared in
a ministerial paper, the Oracle, and that it was prefaced with a head-
note that commends the poem for its homostrophic regularity—each
10-line stanza is ababccdd8e10e12—but denounces its political import
as the product of a “venal Muse” (18 January 1794). Sarcastically dub-
bing the poet as “a Daughter of Liberty,” the headnote is an apology
for printing what it presents as a mercenary tirade against the monar-
chy intended to capitalize on factious populist views. Indeed, the col-
umn directly to the right of Robinson’s ode, also headed “The Queen’s
Birthday,” takes the printing of this poem as an opportunity to con-
demn such populist “torrents of obloquy” directed against “the con-
ditions of SOVEREIGNS.” Denouncing such opinions as “ingratitude”
and “folly” and their propagators as “malignant” and “enthusiastic,”
the Oracle columnist praises the worth and benevolence of the British
monarchy and even suggests that the “unhappy A NTOINETTE” would
be alive if she had followed the example of “the true feminine policy
of the BRITISH QUEEN” and “had kept herself aloof from all politi-
cal intrigue,” which he notes is really the proper concern of the King.
The column concludes with the hope that Queen Charlotte “may long
continue to adorn the station to which her virtues and her serenity of
temper give her so fair a claim,” adding that such a wish “must be the
prayer of every sincere lover of the BRITISH CONSTITUTION!” “Ode for
the 18th of January, 1794” would be one of the last poems Robinson
162 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

published in the Oracle. The negative play given this earlier poem in
the Oracle may account for Robinson’s decision to print the later Portia
poems pseudonymously, but it also suggests the burgeoning conflict
between Robinson’s political views and those held by the proprietors
of the Treasury newspapers that printed her poetry.3
Worth noting is that the Portia poems also formally diverge from
the pattern set by Laura Maria’s publications in the Oracle; the later
poems in the Morning Post are all fixed forms, rather than the elabo-
rate, baroque irregular odes that had distinguished the work of the
earlier avatar. In addition to the two sonnets, for “St. James’s Street”
Robinson uses a simple quatrain called long hymnal measure, consist-
ing of iambic tetrameters rhyming abab. The fourth and final Portia
poem, appearing on 29 January 1795 (and reprinted the following
month in The Sporting Magazine), showcases an entirely new voice in
Robinson’s poetry: “January, 1795” employs quatrains consisting of
trochaic tetrameter couplets (which Shakespeare uses for the chanting
of the witches in Macbeth and which Robinson uses again for “The
Camp,” as we have seen in chapter one). But Anne Janowitz identi-
fies a source for “January 1795” in John Bancks’ “A Description of
London” from 1738 (87). The catalog of sights in Bancks’s poem is a
burlesque eclogue that uncovers the seedier elements of the city and
is itself an imitation of a similar poem about Paris by the French poet
Scarron. Robinson adopts Bancks’s trochaic tetrameter couplets for
a similarly comic effect to capture an image of the city during what
Craciun describes as “the worst winter in living memory” (British 66).
Unlike Bancks’s poem, however, Robinson’s is interested in antithesis
for more directly satirical purposes: the bouncy meter, consistently
end-stopped lines, and frequent medial caesuras lend themselves to
the construction of binaries:

PAVEMENT slipp’ry; People sneezing;


Lords in ermine, beggars freezing;
Nobles, scarce the Wretched heeding;
Gallant soldiers—fighting!—bleeding! (1: 316; 1–4)

The binary poetics, evident in her choice of couplets (iambic or


trochaic), for Robinson’s most socially and politically aware poetry
reflects an eighteenth-century formal lineage As J. Paul Hunter
reminds us, the prevalence of eighteenth-century binaries epitomized
by the use of couplets reflects not merely a overly simplified dualistic
worldview but a desire to set oppositions against one another; as he
writes of Pope’s Essay in Criticism, binaries and couplets serve “to
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 163

merge categories and complicate the terms, showing how they over-
lap, interrelate, and imperfectly represent a reality that is abundant
and complex” (117). Robinson’s use of fixed forms for the Portia
avatar, including the couplet and the quatrain, remind us that such
formal choices are endemic to the program of so much eighteenth-
century poetry and help us to recover “the cultural desire to instruct
and modify not only individuals but the culture they are part of”
(Hunter 129). The point of Robinson’s juxtapositions is fairly
straightforward—a well-chosen, rhetorical move given the context of
the newspaper and its audience, but their formal balance is also meant
to be read as a function of Portia’s superlative reason and justice. Her
dominant mode would be one of reasoned and balanced judgment.
Curran asserts that “January, 1795” is a poem “pointedly without
progress” and lacks “resolution” (“Mary Robinson” 13). True, it is a
montage of images that do not lead to a determinate conclusion such
as Bancks’s punchline with its implied assessment—“This is L ONDON !
How d’ye like it?” (338). But Robinson’s poem aggregates contrasts
in order to perform a censure of the values of her society, and there is
most certainly a cumulative effect as her irony becomes increasingly
and palpably bitter and indignant: her litany of vices returns repeat-
edly to the culture’s neglect of creative artists as it variously catalogs
representations of adultery, injury, deception, greed, ambition, lux-
ury, opulence, poverty, and belligerence. Finally it ends:

Honest men, who can’t get places;


Knaves, who shew unblushing faces;
Ruin hasten’d, Peace retarded!
Candour spurn’d, and Art rewarded! (1: 317; 41–4)

Abrupt as it may seem, the conclusion is a consummation of the accu-


mulation not only of images but of sarcastic antitheses in this final
indictment of 1790s decadence. While the poem may feature “disas-
sembled signifiers,” as Curran puts it, Robinson’s Portia intones a
overt didacticism that accords with the avatar and with the fixed form
of the poem.

Mrs. Robinson’s Voice


After “January, 1795,” Robinson silenced Portia. For the next cou-
ple of years, however, Robinson sought to augment her own voice
by eschewing for the most part the use of avatars, during which
time she concentrated on her most ambitious projects, including the
164 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

novel Angelina, the blank verse tragedy The Sicilian Lover, the son-
net sequence Sappho and Phaon, the novel Hubert de Sevrac, and her
lengthy four-volume novel Walsingham; or, The Pupil of Nature, all of
which appeared under her own name. During this time, from January
of 1795 until December of 1797, Robinson published only a couple of
original poems in periodicals, although poetic extracts from each of
the works listed in the preceding appeared in newspapers and maga-
zines. The one major exception is Robinson’s remarkable poem “The
Storm,” which appeared in the Morning Post under her own name,
“Mrs. Robinson,” on 3 February 1796. This poem is significant for
a number of reasons: first of all, it is a forthright condemnation of
her country’s participation in the slave trade. As Shelley A. J. Jones
has shown, Robinson’s antislavery poem “The Storm” appeared in the
Morning Post in the midst of its reports of Britain’s ill-fated invasion
of French colonies in the Caribbean for the purpose of expanding its
slaving interests, and of a storm that destroyed a number of ships in
a fleet en route to the West Indies (42–5). Robinson’s poem is dated
1 February 1796, the day the paper reported that the surviving ships
had been recovered. Robinson’s poem, however, does not celebrate
the safe return of those ships and the sailors and soldiers. Instead,
she imagines the foundering of one of those ships just off the coast
from the perspective of a young woman, the “love-lorn NANCY” who
watches the catastrophe from the shore, horrified by the imminent
death of her lover, William, in the wreck (1: 318; 6). As she laments
William’s death, Nancy also condemns the system that, as Jones points
out, has made her lover, presumably a sailor or soldier, both “oppres-
sor and oppressed” (45). She watches the terrified shipmates leap from
the deck only to perish in the tumult, and the character Nancy speaks
in a voice that echoes the rhetoric of Robinson’s indignant Portia:

“Oh! Cruel Pow’r! Oh! ruthless fate!


Does H EAV’N’S high will decree,
That some should sleep on beds of State—
Some in the roaring sea?
Some, nurs’d in lux’ry, deal Oppression’s Blow,
While humble M ERIT pines in Poverty and Woe!” (19–24)

Although Nancy decries the dispensations of Providence, Robinson,


in the manner of the Portia poems, directs her critique at artificial
social structures reified by custom and prejudice. Implicit in this, of
course, is the fact that the sailors and soldiers who here perish are also
the victims of class inequities as well as the instruments of bigotry
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 165

and oppression. She goes on to affirm that Nature herself recoils at


the British enterprise, a wickedness unknown, she presumes, to those
whom the white Europeans deem inferior:

“Could the proud Rulers of the Land


The SABLE Race behold;
Some, bow’d by torture’s giant hand!
And others, bought with gold!
Then wou’d they pity SLAVES, and cry with shame,
Whate’er our Tints may be, our SOULS are still the same.
“Why seek to mock the ETHIOP’S face?
Why goad the hapless kind?
Can Features alienate the race?
Is there no Kindred M IND ?
Does not the cheek that vaunts the roseate hue,
Oft blush for crimes that ETHIOP never knew!
“Behold the angry waves conspire
To check the barb’rous toil!
While wounded NATURE’S vengeful ire,
Roars round our trembling Isle!
Methinks her voice re-echoes in the wind,
M AN was not form’d by H EAV’N to trample on his kind.” (25–42)

Robinson’s character borrows the familiar social and even evangeli-


cal rhetoric of the abolition cause and its liberal proponents to make
a number of critical points. But she gives the poem a unique voice in
the construction of her own original, or nonce, form: the stanzas of
“The Storm” are homostrophic, each consisting of a six-line unit that
begins as conventional hymnal measure but that adds a couplet con-
sisting of a pentameter and hexameter: a4b3a4b3c5c6. After Nancy’s
reproachful monologue, which continues in the same stanza estab-
lished by the narrative frame, Robinson resumes the plot of the poem
to show Nancy “madd’ning at the view” of her lover’s drowning and
finally to depict her plunging herself “in A WATRY GR AVE !” (50, 60).
The narrative lends additional pathos to the circumstance and adds
some emotional heft to the polemic by directing the sympathy toward
the two identified English victims, Nancy and William.
Dissatisfied with this aspect of the text’s affective agenda, Robinson
revised the poem extensively for her final volume of verse, Lyrical Tales,
the title of which reflects the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s
Lyrical Ballads. Although Robinson’s “The Storm” appeared two years
before Lyrical Ballads, the poem and its revision later as “The Negro
166 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Girl” show Robinson experimenting with the relation of narrative within


fixed and often peculiar poetic forms, a subject for further exploration
in the next and final chapter of this study. In “The Negro Girl,” the
white Nancy becomes the black Zelma, who watches from an African
shore as her lover Draco perishes on board a sinking English slave ship.
Robinson develops Zelma’s character and history, and heightens the
polemical rhetoric, so that the revised version in its deliberately affec-
tive narrative attempts to present a more trenchant abolitionist argu-
ment.4 On the one hand, the revised version, literally re-presented in
Lyrical Tales, may also refashion the original poem’s essentially liberal
politics into an even more radical one. On the other hand, however, the
Lyrical Tales version, removed from the immediate context in the news-
paper, becomes a more sentimentalized humanitarian narrative similar
to those written by Wordsworth and Southey. Robinson’s interest in
the subjectivity of Zelma, “The Negro Girl,” resembles the way many
of Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads consider an epistemology,
even an aesthetic, of alterity, such as, for example, “The Thorn,” “The
Mad Mother,” or “The Complaint of the Forsaken Indian Woman.” In
that sense, Lyrical Ballads appears to have influenced Robinson’s revi-
sion. In 1796, however, “The Storm” is nonetheless still an innovative
poem—particularly for Robinson. She had experimented previously
with narrative in conventional ballads such as “Sir Raymond of the
Castle” and “Lewin and Gynneth” from her 1791 Poems, and, in Della
Cruscan tetrameter couplets, works such as in “Anselmo, the Hermit of
the Alps” from her 1794 Poems. Here, just as she is starting to compose
Sappho and Phaon, Robinson begins experimenting with innovating
her own fixed, homostrophic nonce forms for narrative poetry. The
trajectory that emerges here shows Robinson’s practice moving from
the baroque irregular forms associated with Laura Maria, to the fixed
and polemical forms of the Portia poems, to a new interest in using
original forms of her own construction to combine narrative with the
subjectivity and formal variety usually associated with lyric poetry. She
may not have coined the phrase “lyrical ballad,” but she elaborated the
concept of formal paradoxy that governs the juxtaposition of the lyric
and the ballad as opposites—the former being the subjective expression
of feelings and insights, and the latter being the objective representa-
tion of characters and events.
Even though she had dropped the Portia avatar, Robinson’s “The
Storm” shows that she continued to see the Morning Post under
Stuart’s direction as the most viable forum for her most politically
inflected poetry. After the ambivalence, opportunism, and political
maneuvering evident in the Laura Maria poems for the Oracle, the
rectitude of Robinson’s response to the extremities of “Pitt’s terror”
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 167

demanded that she forego the use of pseudonyms and claim a stance
of her own, particularly at this time, just weeks after the passage of
Pitt’s Two Bills, and in this place—the Morning Post. On 25 January
1796, Stuart published in full a thorough denunciation by the Whig
Club, with Fox chairing, of the Two Bills. Founded, as it claimed,
on constitutional principles established by the so-called Glorious
Revolution, this “Declaration” asserts that the Whig Club “cannot
be unconcerned spectators of the destruction of the most important
securities of Public Liberty which were provided in that glorious æra.”
Appealing to the people, the document asserts that the “Constitution
can, in our judgment, now only be restored by the exercise of that
just authority which the National Opinion must ever posses over the
proceedings of the Legislature.” Over the next few years, Stuart’s
paper would continue to be a source of vexation to Pitt’s government.
To cite one noteworthy example, Stuart took the occasion of a royal
procession to St. Paul’s in celebration of and thanksgiving for the
country’s military success to look askance at the government’s pros-
ecution of the war, writing on 19 December 1797:

Mr. FOX, Mr. SHERIDAN, the Duke of BEDFORD, and other Members
of Opposition, intend, we believe, to join in the ceremony at St. Paul’s
this day. The naval victories obtained over our enemies are a subject
for rejoicing to every Friend of the Independence of this Country; and
those Gentlemen have convinced the world that they are the most sin-
cere friends of that Independence. It is only to be regretted, that such
victories should tend to keep in power men like our present Ministers.

The affair was a particularly hollow display given the fact that the
Austrians had a few months earlier made peace with France, leaving
Great Britain as the sole relict of the First Coalition. In the same
issue, the paper delightedly reported in great detail the “DREADFUL
OUTR AGE” perpetrated the day before when protesters hanged an
effigy of “Billy Pitt,” with a sign that identified Pitt as “Robespierre’s
brother.” In the adjacent column, Stuart printed a poem called
“Verses on the 19th of December, 1797” and signed “Humanitas.”
In stronger terms than Stuart’s pose of tempered patriotism permit-
ted, this poem angrily derides the procession as not only vacuous, but
also horrifically callous:

WHILE shouts and acclamations rend the skies,


From the deep Ocean, bleeding, cold, and wan,
See groaning SPECTRES in a body rise,
To mourn the mis’ries of ambitious MAN !
168 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

O’er them the rude Sea dashes, mix’d with gore;


The wild Winds howl in dreadful blasts along;
The sulphur show’rs, upon the high decks pour,
And livid lightnings flash the wave among!
Here glare the PARENT, bleeding is his breast!
Here the lost HUSBAND falls, and, groaning, dies!
Here the lov’d SONS, the mother’s darlings, rest,
While o’er their mangled limbs the billows rise!
Are these forgot? – Oh NATURE ! yet a while,
Shed the soft tear, and heave the tender sigh,
Suspend the shout of triumph! raptures smile!
And raise, in sorrow raise, the tearful eye.
Let Reason, Truth, RELIGION’s pow’r divine!
Call to the feeling and reflecting mind,
The many suff’rers who in anguish pine—
The SOLDIER’S, SAILOR’S kindred—left behind!
And while the long-drawn pompous Cavalcade
Bids clam’rous exultation lift the head;
Let mild HUMANITY the triumph aid,
And P ITY’S tear embalm the sainted DEAD !
HUMANITAS.

Although nongendered, the signature suggests a voice not unlike


Robinson’s Portia. The Latin word humanitas means kindness and
is thus the root of humanitarian; it is also the term Cicero uses to
express the ideal human being (Grant 23). As Craciun was the first to
prove, this poem was indeed written by Robinson and was reprinted
as “Lines Written on a Day of Public Rejoicing!” in her 1806 Poetical
Works (British 79).5 Although she never again used the signature, the
appearance of the poem by Robinson as Humanitas in December of
1797, shortly after the publication of Walsingham, places it among a
group of poems that signal her return to newspaper verse and a new
professional arrangement with Stuart at the Morning Post.

The Trouble with Tabitha Bramble


Robinson’s Humanitas poem coincides with the debut of her latest
avatar—Tabitha Bramble, the most vexing of them all, which Robinson
used exclusively for the Morning Post. As the name suggests, this ava-
tar would seem to be an adaptation of the foolish, shrewish, hypocrit-
ically pious, middle-aged woman who narrowly escapes spinsterhood
from Smollett’s novel Humphry Clinker (1771). Robinson’s Tabitha
Bramble signature is best known in connection to a number of poems
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 169

that appeared in the Morning Post during the final year of her life,
after she became Stuart’s principal poetry contributor in December of
1799, when Southey resigned the position and left for Portugal. She
collected several of these for her final volume, Lyrical Tales, includ-
ing “Mistress Gurton’s Cat,” “Deborah’s Parrot,” and “The Granny
Grey,” which Lisa Vargo has discussed in relation to Wordsworth
and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. Other Lyrical Tales such as “Old
Barnard. A Monkish Tale,” “The Confessor,” and “The Fortune
Teller” also first appeared in the Morning Post with the Tabitha
Bramble signature.6 In December of 1797, however, the Morning Post
began printing an elusive series of poems that I call the first batch of
Tabitha Bramble poems to distinguish them from the more famous
ones collected in Lyrical Tales. Robinson’s first Tabitha Bramble
poem, “Tabitha Bramble Visits the Metropolis by Command of her
Departed Brother,” initiated a series of eight poems that appeared
in the Morning Post during the winter of 1797–8. These poems had
never reappeared in any collections of her work until 2009, when I
included them in my edition of her complete poems. While I tend
to agree with Judith Pascoe that the later Tabitha poems may just
be “bits of comic business meant primarily, if not solely, to amuse”
(181), the first batch of Tabitha poems are particularly interesting to
me because they are among the most explicitly political poems she
ever wrote. Some of them are downright vituperative. And they differ
significantly from the Tabitha Bramble poems of 1800 and raise more
questions than provide answers.
In September of 1797, having already made the Post profitable,
Stuart purchased the Gazetteer and merged it with the Post to form
the Morning Post and Gazetteer. In November, Stuart contracted both
Robinson and Coleridge to write poetry for the newspaper and to give
it more literary cachet (Erdman, “Lost Poem” 253); Robinson’s rela-
tionship with Coleridge will be explored in greater depth in the next
chapter of the present study. As we know from Stuart’s later account, in
a series of letters to the Gentleman’s Magazine in the summer of 1838,
and from Coleridge’s letters, Stuart’s brother-in-law, James Mackintosh,
was the intermediary at first between Coleridge and Stuart, suggesting
to each party that Coleridge contribute. Stuart recalls that he agreed
and “settled him at a small salary” (485). Robinson, who had been only
an occasional contributor to the paper, made a similar agreement with
Stuart. Under the new arrangement, presumably similar to Coleridge’s,
Robinson contributed the seven poems signed “Tabitha Bramble” that
appeared from December 8, 1797 through February 19, 1798, none
of which Robinson or anyone else ever republished until my 2009
170 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

edition. Erdman’s edition of Essays on His Times shows that Coleridge’s


first poems for the paper appear during December, along with this first
batch of Tabitha Bramble poems (3: 285–6). In fact, the first poem by
Coleridge under this arrangement appears the day before Robinson’s
first Tabitha Bramble poem. On 7 December 1797, Coleridge’s “Lines
to an Unfortunate Woman, in the Back Seats of the Boxes at the
Theatre” appeared with an avatar of his own: Albert, also the name
of the protagonist of Coleridge’s drama Osorio, which he had recently
completed. Significantly, at the start of December, Stuart also began
aggressively promoting Robinson’s Walsingham, which he puffs as
“one of the most entertaining [works] ever published,” and from which
he reprints Robinson’s poems “Penelope’s Epitaph” and “Stanzas on
Jealousy” (2 December 1797). Perhaps to flatter Robinson, perhaps to
fill space, or perhaps to antagonize the Anti-Jacobin, Stuart fills his col-
umns during three full months, through February 1798, with poems
and prose passages extracted from Walsingham and a heavy amount of
puffing. These run concomitantly with the “Tabitha Bramble” poems,
over the same period of time.
Within a week of the start of Stuart’s Walsingham campaign,
Robinson debuted her “Tabitha Bramble” pseudonym. In the
Memoirs, the “friend” who continues the narrative of Robinson’s life
(Maria Elizabeth Robinson or Pratt) writes that Robinson “com-
menced a series of Satirical Odes, on local and temporary subjects,
to which was affixed the signature of ‘Tabitha Bramble.’ ” The writer
goes on to say that “these lighter compositions” were “considered by
the author as unworthy of a place with her collected poems” (7: 286).
But in this section of the Memoirs, the “friend” is writing specifically
about the final year of Robinson’s life and confuses the “Tabitha,”
“Tabitha Bramble,” “T. B.” poems Robinson wrote in 1800 with the
earlier “Tabitha Bramble” odes that appeared in the winter of 1797–8
in the Morning Post; that is, the first batch. To me, these early poems
must be the ones that the writer of the Memoirs refers to as “unwor-
thy” because these, perhaps more than any of her other poems, seem
hastily, even sloppily, composed and were probably written for imme-
diate financial gain more than for any serious literary purpose. And
these poems, not the Tabitha Bramble poems of 1800, are the ones
that Maria Elizabeth excluded from the 1806 Poetical Works, so these
poems were never claimed by Robinson or reprinted by her daughter.
They are so unlike her other poems that I have considered the pos-
sibility that she was not the author.
The signature of a fictional character prima facie cannot guar-
antee the authority of any piece of writing. There is ample proof
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 171

that newspaper pseudonyms were promiscuous. People other than


Robinson wrote as “Oberon,” “Sappho,” and even “Laura.” As it turns
out, the Tabitha Bramble pseudonym also was not exclusively hers.
Craciun attributes to Robinson an angry letter to Robert Dundas,
Lord Advocate of Scotland, regarding the conviction of the Scottish
reformers William Skirving and Maurice Margarot (British 71–4).
Davenport, however, editor of Robinson’s letters for the Pickering and
Chatto edition, has confirmed the suspicions the other editors and I
had about this letter: although signed “Tabitha Bramble,” the letter
is not Robinson’s. Comparing the letter to Dundas against the other
letters in Robinson’s handwriting, Davenport writes, “The writing is
too upright, the words too close together, and the letters are not all
formed in Robinson’s manner (for example the ‘y’ is written with a
neat hook, and the ‘g’ with a distinct loop, which is not characteris-
tic of her)” (295). Although Craciun’s general reading of Robinson’s
increasing radicalism in 1794 is correct, the letter is not hers; if it
were, it certainly would be “a daring political intervention” (Craciun
74), although I have always felt that the signature of Smollett’s comic
character undermines the severity of the protest. The final image in
the letter of Smollett’s overheated spinster as a British Corday is pure
bathos. At the very least, the choice of Smollett’s character as the sig-
nature for this letter was simply an allusion to the Brambles’ Scottish
nationality and provincialism. By contrast, Robinson’s Tabitha
Bramble poems actually have little to do with Smollett’s character.
While I cannot disprove Robinson’s authorship of the first batch, I
do find them to be more like Peter Pindar’s poetry than like any of the
poems Robinson would later write with the Tabitha Bramble signature.
Robinson wrote them in deliberate imitation of Peter Pindar—as they
frequently assert—but it is possible that Wolcot may have had a hand
in writing them, perhaps in collaboration with Robinson. Because the
Memoirs refer to them, however, I included the first batch in my edi-
tion, and I assume that she wrote these poems in the spirit of mutual
enthusiasm with which Robinson and Stuart entered into their new
relationship. The following eight poems appeared over the course of
three months:

1. “Tabitha Bramble Visits the Metropolis by Command of her


Departed Brother” (8 December 1797)
2. “A Simple Tale” (13 December 1797)
3. “Tabitha Bramble, to her Cousins in Scotland” (25 December
1797)
4. “Ode Fourth. For New Year’s Day” (1 January 1798)
172 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

5. “A New Song, to an Old Tune” (12 January 1798) [T.B.]


6. “Sonnet [beginning “Say, Stern Oppression”]” (3 February 1798)
[T.B.]
7. “Ode Fifth” (14 February 1798)
8. “A New Song” (19 February 1798) [T.B.]

Of these eight poems, the five odes in the series are signed “Tabitha
Bramble”; the other three poems, the two songs and the sonnet, are
signed “T.B.” This might warrant further investigation because the
five odes seem more deliberately performative than the other three.
Indeed, the sonnet signed “T.B.” is not satirical or even comic in
the least. While Vargo argues that Robinson’s Tabitha deliberately
“works in an opposite direction” from Smollett’s (38), I think anyone
familiar with Smollett’s Humphry Clinker is likely going to be dis-
appointed with—if not exasperated by—Robinson’s performances as
Tabitha Bramble. The most puzzling thing about the Tabitha poems
is how incongruous they seem in relation to Smollett’s original char-
acter, who was popular and visually represented in new engravings for
reprints of the book. For the most part, Robinson’s Tabitha poems
are oblivious to the most superficial aspects of Smollett’s character-
ization: these poems possess very little local color (other than perhaps
their irregular meters that match Wolcot’s), no Scots dialect or Scots
expressions, no malapropisms, no comical misspellings, and only
occasional successes at wit. The epistolary nature of Smollett’s book
provides such specific depictions of the character and her manner of
expression. To take one example, in Smollett, Tabby writes to Mrs
Gwyllim, the family’s housekeeper back in Scotland, “I wrote to doc-
tor Lews for the same porpuss, but he never had the good manners to
take the least notice of my letter; for which reason, I shall never favour
him with another, though he beshits me on his bended knees” (175).
Robinson, however, never convincingly performs Smollett’s character
and one might wonder if she even read the book.
Like many of her poetic satires, these first Tabitha Bramble poems
are grounded in London and in London society and politics; but
unlike her other more urbane satires, these are situated from the
perspective of the rustic outsider. The first one, “Tabitha Bramble
Visits the Metropolis by Command of her Departed Brother” delib-
erately invokes Smollett’s novel because Tabitha’s brother, as her
readers would have known, is the cantankerous but lovably sensible
Matthew Bramble; in the first stanza of the ode Tabitha, is in mourn-
ing for him. But Matthew Bramble does not die in Humphry Clinker.
Moreover, at the end of the novel, Tabitha marries the quixotic
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 173

Scottish Captain Lismahago (who has been scalped by the Miami


Indians) and Matthew suspects that she does so “for no other rea-
son but that she despaired of making a more agreeable conquest”
(382). He nonetheless is relieved to report at the end that “captain
Lismahago has taken Tabby off my hands” (389). Robinson’s Tabitha
Bramble, however, is still single, and in one line she even refers to her
“Virgin brows” (1: 346; 13). The first stanza of “Tabitha Bramble
Visits the Metropolis” reads as follows:

From Mountains, barren, bleak, and bare,


Where howls the boist’rous North!
Sunk in the sullen sadness of despair,
A weeping sister wanders forth!
Not in light weeds Ephesian clad,
But deeply and supremely sad!
Like pure Andromache, that matron old,
(So out of fashion)
Or fair Lucretia! She who died,
(As we are told)
Of Chastity the victim and the pride,
To punish Tarquin’s rude and guilty passion! (1: 346; 1–12)

Robinson’s Tabitha appears to be a somewhat softened and highly


refined, and thus wholly inaccurate, version of Smollett’s character.
This poem, by the way, is unique in featuring Robinson’s only refer-
ence to Homer’s Iliad in any of her poems and, in the reference to
Tarquin, her only rape joke. While the poem is not devoid of humor,
the humor it possesses does not come from a recognizably Smollett-
esque character, certainly not from this speaker here. Where the poem
is satirical, its targets, moreover, are obscure. I might like to read
the poem as a self-parody of Robinson’s own pretentiousness, which
had emerged painfully enough in her 1793 satirical poem Modern
Manners, with its cringe-inducing signature “Horace Juvenal.” At one
point in the poem at hand, Robinson’s Tabitha sarcastically mocks
literary critics as “the sapient cognoscenti of the age” (1: 347; 28).
Again, not something Smollett’s Tabitha would say—unless the joke
were meant to be on her.
We must accept that Robinson does mean to re-imagine the charac-
ter. For these first Tabitha poems she wanted to create a female persona
for satire similar to her friend Wolcot’s “Peter Pindar.” As it turns out,
“Matthew Bramble” did die in 1790 in the person of Scottish poet
Andrew Macdonald (c.1755–90); Macdonald had published occa-
sional satirical pieces under the pseudonym “Matthew Bramble” in the
174 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Morning Post in December 1789 and January 1790 (and reportedly in


other papers as well). So, when Stuart hired Robinson, the first thing
she did was to take on the Bramble mantle from Macdonald, whom
she likely had read in the Morning Post because of his series of Odes
to Actors, which appeared just as she was getting started writing for
The World and then for The Oracle. On the day before the first poem
appeared, Stuart announced in the Post that “We have received the first
number of a series of Odes, by Tabitha Bramble, a relation of the late
Matthew Bramble, and a promise is made that the Morning Post shall
be favoured with the remainder” (7 December 1797). Stuart unmis-
takably here refers to Macdonald as the “late Matthew Bramble.” The
Tabitha Bramble pseudonym, therefore, likely emerged as an inside
joke among Stuart, Wolcot, and Robinson, and became an homage
to Macdonald and to the paper’s heyday as an opposition broadsheet.
Stuart later recalled that Macdonald worked for his brother Peter at the
Star, but that the Post lured him away (25). If so, it may have been John
Taylor, another close friend of Robinson and the Post’s editor at the
time, who employed Macdonald. Lucyle Werkmeister, moreover, locates
Daniel Stuart, Wolcot, and Macdonald working together at the Post
in the second half of 1789, along with Stuart’s brother-in-law, James
Mackintosh, who later engaged Coleridge on behalf of Stuart (322). And
even though Macdonald died seven years prior to these poems, earlier
in 1797, Wolcot had republished Macdonald’s poems as A Supplement
to the Works of Peter Pindar. As we can see, then, Robinson here is not
portraying the character from Smollett’s novel; instead, she is perform-
ing as a female “Peter Pindar” or a female “Matthew Bramble”—that
is, as a satirical writer explicitly employing a pen-name and not really a
novelistic character at all.
As the first poem proceeds, Robinson’s Tabitha follows “a pure
effulgent star” (and if anything can verify Robinson’s authorship it
is her penchant for the word effulgent) that promises to lead her to
poetic fame:

Still shall a bough from M ATTHEW’S wreathe divine,


About my throbbing temples twine;
No thing uncommon in these pilf’ring days,
To shade an empty brow, beneath another’s bays! (1: 347; 23–6)

Here she uses what is probably the most prominent motif in her
poetry—the transfer of the laurel wreath from the poetic predeces-
sor to herself. But it would seem that here she satirizes the gesture as
plagiarism, and some of this may be a parody of women poets, given
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 175

her own predilection for masculine forms, as we have seen. But it


could easily all be in fun as well, because her “brother” Matthew was
not tremendously successful—certainly not as successful as Robinson
herself and Wolcot were.
Tabitha, admittedly a poetic novice, goes on to invoke the muses
as an announcement of her arrival on the scene:

Then hail me, all ye Nine,


Hail TABITHA, divine!
For ere I quit the proud Parnassian throng,
I’ll ring your sacred ears with many a song. (1: 347; 47–50)

Macdonald performs a similar maneuver in the ode that opens his


series of Odes to Actors in December of 1789, signed “Matthew
Bramble, Esq.” He addresses “Immortal Peter” and his infamous
satires on the Royal Academy, Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians
(1782–6), and compares his satirical project with Peter Pindar’s:

Painters and Play’rs have this one common feature,


They hold the faithful “mirror up to Nature,”
At least the better sort; for some there are
Who with plain Nature wage eternal war. (Morning Post 21
December 1789)

Macdonald knew something about the theatre, having written several


plays, including Vimonda, a Tragedy, which was staged in Edinburgh
and Haymarket in 1787. The Odes to Actors continued over the course
of several weeks, finally numbering twenty-two poems. When he died
suddenly in 1790, notice of his death and obituaries appeared in vari-
ous newspaper columns under the heading “Matthew Bramble.” John
Murray, the elder, rushed a volume of collected works into print to
assist Macdonald’s widow; the list of subscribers was published in
the papers and included the Kemble and Siddons brothers. This is
the book that Wolcot republished in 1797. In making a move simi-
lar to Macdonald’s hearkening to Peter Pindar, Robinson as Tabitha
Bramble appellates her peers in her new network and thus articulates
her space within it.
Robinson’s first poem suggests that her target will be literary
critics, bad poets, and dramatists, including Hannah More, a favor-
ite target of Peter Pindar. Again, by claiming the targets of her
compeers for herself, she highlights her arrival and participation in
the network. At the end of the first poem, Robinson’s Tabitha sees
the ghost of Macdonald’s Matthew who commands that she take
176 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

up his satirical cause in London and extend it beyond the literary


sphere:

Wan was his cheek! his eye’s sunk sphere,


Gleam’d dimly thro’ a frozen tear!
And while the bounding chords he smote,
The night-breeze paus’d, to hear the note—
That dying on the gale,
Told lorn VELINA’S tender tale—
Piercing the heart with softer trills,
Than MONA’S harp e’er pour’d on CAMBRIA’S sounding hills!
“Haste,” said the Spectre sad, “to Britain’s shores,
“And from the central mart of busy care,
“To where the circling Ocean roars,
“My fateful lessons bear!”
He sigh’d and vanish’d! I obey’d,
To warn a daring race, and sooth a brother’s shade! (1: 348;
85–98)

So the poem ends, including the most concrete evidence of Macdonald’s


influence—the reference to his Velina, a Poetical Fragment, a narrative
poem in Spenserian stanzas that appeared in 1782 under Macdonald’s
own name.
Heeding Matthew’s command, the first batch of Tabitha Bramble
poems turns out to be broader political satire, filled with references
to specific events, figures, and policies. The second and third poems,
for example, refer sarcastically to Burke’s phrase “the swinish multi-
tude.” The second ode, “A Simple Tale,” attacks Pitt as a juggler, thus
recalling Robert Merry’s “Signor Pittachio” satire of 1794 (Craciun,
British 78). This poem ends with a direct allusion to Peter Pindar’s
most famous poem, The Lousiad, and his now-clichéd phrase “save
our bacon” (1: 351; 90). The third ode explicitly mocks the King’s
proclamation of December 19 as a day of national thanksgiving
for recent British naval victories. Recalling Robinson’s Humanitas
poem, Tabitha skewers the ceremonial procession of HRH to St.
Paul’s Cathedral accompanied by Prime Minister Pitt, clergy, mem-
bers of Parliament, naval officers, and sailors. She attacks Pitt in par-
ticular, describing how “WILLY, like an Ostrich hides / His head
in DUNCAN’S well-earn’d glory!” (55–6), referring to the success of
Admiral Adam Duncan, who commanded the British fleet to vic-
tory at the Battle of Camperdown (11 October 1797). But the poem
begins with a deliberate exposition of the Tabitha Bramble character
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 177

that points directly to the literary and satirical associations the poet
wishes to make:

AGAIN I smite the bounding string


Of pious pomp, and sacred joys to sing!
Not like a Poet, lofty and sublime,
Like P INDAR (Peter-nam’d), or M ATTHEW BR AMBLE,
But a poor spinster of the rudest rhyme,
Whose P EGASUS no lofty flight pursues,
To revel midst Parnassian dews,
But doom’d a sorry jade, o’er mortal scenes to amble. (1: 351; 1–8)

Tabitha here defers to Wolcot’s and Macdonald’s satirical personae,


so it is clear that the character Robinson develops owes more to
them than to Smollett. The satire is disorienting, though, because
the poem oscillates between sarcastic attack and more praise of the
Whig heroes—“Some bright examples”—attending the procession,
with the result of such encomia appearing to be at least facetious (1:
353; 84). The poem concludes with a tribute to Georgiana, Duchess
of Devonshire, that bears one of Robinson’s most distinctive marks:
“And thou, DEVONIA, beauteous Dame! / Thou too shalt share a
wreath of Fame” (91–2). But one wonders if praise from Tabitha
Bramble is supposed to be valued or not.
This Tabitha Bramble is aggressively hostile to authority and is
not really the homespun neophyte she claims to be. Certainly, the
litany of Pitt’s ministers and courtiers who appear in “Ode Fourth.
For New Year’s Day” is meant to embarrass them as more fitting sub-
jects for Poet Laureate Henry James Pye, who, in that post, “makes
poor Pegassus—a venal hack— / Carrying triumphant home,—a
butt of sack!” (1: 355; 29–30). Tabitha impugns the integrity of the
royal laureate, who receives only a small pittance and a cask of wine
for his loyalty. “The Patron of the Muses pays— / the glozer for
his dulcet lays,” she writes, making a cunning allusion to Milton’s
Satan and thus suggesting an unholy alliance (33–4).7 These poems
become increasingly overt in their attacks on Pitt and increasingly
ad hominem. Employing the traditional “derry down” refrain from
popular English songs, “A New Song, to an Old Tune” exposes
Pitt’s warmongering as an excuse for taxation from which he himself
profits:

Oh! B—y loves War, for he pockets the shiners;


And mocks the plain sense of the patriot diviners;
178 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

While he pays all his cronies, with other folks’ pelf,


And, by bankrupting millions, enriches himself! (1: 357; 6–9)

In a move more characteristic of Peter Pindar than Mary Robinson,


Tabitha takes the opportunity to mock Pitt’s unmarried status as evi-
dence of his callow virginity and implied homosexuality: ostensibly
referring to Pitt’s dual position as First Lord of the Treasury, Tabitha
hints, “With garters and tinsel he dresses his toys, / and he calls the
gay puppets his Tr—y boys” (13–4), and then a few lines down, she
adds, “To his own wily race, see the VIRGIN-BOY cling” (26). Tabitha
finally concludes that Pitt’s presumed chastity is more fundamentally
inhuman through an ironic inversion of Burke’s famous epithet for
the masses: “Then in vain shall the SWINE grunt of taxes and woe, /
While the VIRGIN of BRITAIN is cold as its snow” (358; 41–2). Pitt
thus becomes a parodic Mother of Christ. The series proper con-
cludes with a bizarre and somewhat incoherent fable attempted in
the manner of John Gay’s animal fables; this piece is meant to be
a response to the secession of the Foxite Whigs from the House of
Commons in 1797 after their failed attempts to impeach Pitt. In the
poem, which is inscribed to the Duke of Portland, Fox’s former ally,
the King appears as his familiar lampoon “Farmer George.” The
other characters are an assortment of birds: Fox is the Eagle of “lin-
eage high” (because he was the second son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron
Holland [1705–74] and a descendent of Charles II). In contrast, Pitt
appears as the “long-neck’d, noisy, gabbling Gander; / A thing, the
Farmer oft wou’d hold / In solemn converse” (1: 361–2; 18–20).
The fable laments Portland’s defection to Pitt’s side, which many saw
as committing to the King’s desire to reassert monarchical authority
throughout Europe as the war with France continued. The subject and
the style of these poems are uncharacteristic of Robinson, but she was
ever the poetic chameleon. This new direction also may derive from
her increased friendliness with Godwin and Wollstonecraft, from her
continued intimacy with Wolcot, and perhaps from the bitterness of
the separation from Tarleton, whose politics she likely abhorred.
The trouble with Tabitha Bramble, then, is not just the incongruity
between her first performance and Smollett’s character, but also the
way in which her later re-adoption of the character in 1800 does not
match either her earlier Tabitha or Smollett’s. Like Portia before her,
Tabitha Bramble disappeared after only a handful of poems. One more
poem in this series, “Admonitory Ode VIII. Tabitha Bramble to Peter
Pindar,” would appear much later in July of 1799. The numbering of
this poem as “Ode VIII” is odd because the sixth and seventh Tabitha
odes are not known to exist. The number may signify a relationship to
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 179

one of Wolcot’s “Peter Pindar” odes that I have not yet been able to
trace, or possibly even a collaboration with him. Although the poem
belatedly addresses the Peter Pindar pension scandal of 1795, Wolcot
recently had published his “Admonitory Ode to the Blue-Stocking-
Club,” so the title may be a more or less oblique reference to one of his
poems. Except for one short epigram, Robinson did not use any varia-
tion of the Tabitha Bramble signature again until after she succeeded
Robert Southey as Stuart’s chief poetry contributor in December of
1799. When Tabitha does reappear, she is markedly a softer and more
feminine character with none of the aggressive satirical and political
belligerence of the first batch. This Tabitha Bramble bears no rela-
tion, figurative or otherwise, to Macdonald’s Matthew Bramble or,
for that matter, to the ever-political and vituperative Peter Pindar. The
first Tabitha poem of the second batch is on “The Mince Pie,” with
the humorous apostrophe “HAIL, SAV’RY COMPOUND!” (2: 18). This
is followed by a pair of poems on “Modern Female Fashions” and
“Modern Male Fashions” that burlesque in symmetry the most ridicu-
lous trends, but that also recall the montage technique Robinson used
for her Portia poems. Robinson attached the epithet “Spinster” to the
“Tabitha Bramble” signature for a satirical poem on “The Ingredients
which Compose Modern Love” to highlight the irony of the persona’s
jaded perspective. She deploys this version of Tabitha for poems par-
ticularly skeptical of erotic love and its devastating consequences for
women, such as “Lesbia and Her Lover,” “The Beau’s Remonstrance,”
“All For-Lorn,” “When I Was Young,” and “Pretty Susan.”
More often, though, Robinson would use the Tabitha Bramble ava-
tar for comic homespun narrative poems influenced by Wordsworth’s
1798 Lyrical Ballads and Southey’s 1799 English Eclogues, which
appeared in the second volume of his Poems. Poems such as “Old
Barnard. A Monkish Tale,” “The Tell Tale; or, Deborah’s Parrot,”
“The Confessor—A Tale,” “The Fortune-Teller—A Tale,” and “The
Granny Grey—A Tale” reveal a new interest in rustic settings, coun-
try folk, and simple plots that accord with the tenor of Southey’s and
Wordsworth’s poems of that period.8 Under the influence of Southey
and Wordsworth, Robinson becomes more interested in narrative
poetry as a vehicle for a similar humanitarian concern for the poor and
disenfranchised—a concern that Robinson had expressed previously
in more ostensibly lyric poetry but which is here apparent in these new
Tabitha Bramble poems, as well as in other pieces Robinson published
under her own name during this year, such as “The Poor Singing
Dame,” “Agnes,” “Poor Marguerite,” and “The Old Beggar,” which
appeared first in the Morning Post; and “All Alone,” “The Lascar,”
and “The Shepherd’s Dog,” from Lyrical Tales. Based on her previous
180 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poetry, I cannot imagine Robinson writing these poems without hav-


ing had the examples of Southey and Wordsworth before her. In this
way, the Tabitha Bramble of the Lyrical Tales parallels the familiar
course of political disillusionment that we see in Wordsworth and
Coleridge—that is, the turn away from overtly political poetry toward
more general humanitarian and social concerns. The later Tabitha
may be an entirely new character that Robinson reinvents under the
influence of Lyrical Ballads. In this way, the second Tabitha Bramble
seems quite a distance, not just in years but in subject matter and
tone, from her predecessor and the scathing satire of the first batch.
But those narrative poems Robinson attributes to the second
Tabitha Bramble have a peculiarly bawdy spirit that one is hard-pressed
to find in either Southey’s or Wordsworth’s narrative poems of this
time. Tabitha Bramble is without a doubt Robinson’s randiest avatar;
many of these poetic tales revolve around erotic themes of decep-
tion, jealousy, and promiscuity. The earliest of these poems, “The
Mistletoe. A Christmas Tale,” which was reprinted as a one-sheet
print with an illustration, Robinson signed “Laura Maria,” although
this poem clearly marks a new direction that the poet would quickly
assign to Tabitha Bramble: posing as a jaded spinster, Robinson uses
the erotic elements of these poems to direct criticism at vain deceitful
young women. For instance, in “The Mistletoe,” Mistress Homespun
uses the holiday tradition of kissing beneath the mistletoe to manipu-
late both her jealous older husband and her would-be seducer for the
ultimate purpose of humiliating her own rival for the younger man’s
attention. Tabitha takes it for granted that men are always game for
erotic assignation and deception, but she holds women to a higher
standard while also exulting in narratives of their frailty and culpabil-
ity, usually with a pat moral attached to the end. In “The Tell Tale;
or, Deborah’s Parrot,” Tabitha describes the sexually repressed and
shrewish Miss Debby, who “Resolv’d a spinster pure to be” (2: 53; 5);
Robinson’s revision for Lyrical Tales significantly changes “Resolv’d”
to “Was doom’d” to account perhaps for the woman’s malice and
adds that she “A Spinster’s life had long detested, / But ‘twas her
quiet destiny, / Never to be molested!” (2: 465). Debby, envious of
the “soft delights her breast ne’er felt,” observes the promiscuity of
her neighbors and delights in exposing the guilty wives:

Yet she had watchful ears and eyes


For ev’ry gamesome neighbor;
And never did she cease to labour
A tripping female to surprise. (6–10)
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 181

Miss Debby’s preferred mode of attack is teaching her parrot to repeat


slanderous gossip in order “to vex a young and pretty neighbour” (22).
When her neighbors finally drive the old woman and her parrot out
of town, the wealthy Debby manages to find a suitably cantankerous
spouse who takes pride in the fact that his wife is so unattractive that
he need not doubt her fidelity. Debby receives her comeuppance as the
now-neglected parrot resumes his innuendoes and insinuations, so the
jealous husband presumes his wife to be guilty and beats her mercilessly.
Apparently approving, Tabitha blandly reports, “And many a drubbing
DEBBY bought / For mischief she her PARROT taught” (77–8). The
moral finally is that “Slander turns against its maker” (79).
For all of the bawdy fun in these poems, the Tabitha Bramble
poems reveal a satirical hostility toward women that one might easily
construe as misogyny.9 In “The Granny Grey,” for instance, another
old gossip receives her just deserts, this time for interfering in her
granddaughter’s love life. Like Miss Debby, Dame Dowson, though
not a spinster, delights in gossip: “Scandal,” Tabitha informs us, was
“her pleasure and her trade” (2: 87; 10). Jealous of her granddaugh-
ter’s beauty and her handsome beau, the “Granny Grey” demands
that the girl swear a vow of chastity, although she is certain it will fail.
“But L OVE, with cunning all his own, / Would never let the Maid
alone,” so the girl succumbs to her desire and arranges “an assigna-
tion” with her lover in the woods (49–50, 57). The old woman sus-
pects as much and waits “to spoil their merriment” (65). The young
Edwin, however, spies the dame and summons all his neighbors to
watch him humiliate her. As he ironically proceeds to make love to
the old woman, she succumbs to her desire—“And she was too much
charm’d to be / In haste to end the comedy” (85–86) —at which
point the crowd burst from their hiding places and carry the morti-
fied old woman “in triumph,” jeering at her “with wanton jests, and
sportive songs” until she repents and consents to the union of the
lovers (87–100). The moral of this tale is that old women should not
interfere with the love affairs of young people. While these tales are
amusing enough for newspaper poetry, they are also at odds with
Robinson’s other, more humanitarian messages because, as Tabitha
Bramble at least, she approves of the humiliation and punishment of
sexually repressed old women. But Tabitha’s satire is not directed only
at old women: in both “The Confessor” and “The Fortune-Teller”
she exposes the tendencies of lascivious young women, too. In the
former poem, an unfaithful wife Bridget and her lover are interrupted
by her little boy who wonders who the man is in his father’s bed;
she tells him it is the local priest come to hear confession. When the
182 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

jealous husband, a farmer, arrives home, the boy innocently tells his
father that the priest is hiding underneath the bed. More domestic
violence ensues: “For, with his cudgel, he repaid / The folly of his
gamesome mate” (2: 66; 86–7). Similarly, in “The Fortune-Teller,”
a young woman named Kate deceives her lovesick fiancé Lubin, and
becomes pregnant by a “rustic libertine” (2: 78; 16). When a gypsy
informs Lubin that his future bride, whom he presumes is a virgin,
will give birth in just six months, Lubin decides to test Kate by prais-
ing the wondrous prophecies of the gypsies; intrigued, she seeks out
one who is really Lubin in disguise and asks him to tell her fortune.
When she inadvertently confirms his suspicions, Lubin, after taking
ten pounds as payment, reveals himself to “her dismay” (89). He is
rewarded by the revelation of her true character and, as Tabitha glibly
notes, by the return of the ten pounds he paid to the actual gypsy
who first disabused him. Tabitha reminds her readers,

Thus FORTUNE pays the LOVER BOLD ;


But, gentle MAIDS, should FATE
Have any secret yet untold—
Remember simple K ATE ! (95–8)

Tabitha’s satire incriminates women more than it does men. In her


Letter to the Woman of England, Robinson censures Pope’s “cynical
asperity towards the enlightened sex” while praising Ingram’s rejoin-
der to it (8: 148). Her Tabitha Bramble poems, however, have more
than a little “cynical asperity” toward women, a fact that certainly
complicates readings of Robinson’s liberal humanism as well as her
radical proto-feminism. Then again, as a satirist, Robinson consid-
ered any subject fair game, so she used her Tabitha Bramble avatar as
a form for satirizing other women, a group by whom she felt particu-
larly slighted and persecuted, as we have seen.
Robinson clearly reconceived the avatar to suit various purposes,
usually satirical. Whereas the first batch of poems show the Tabitha
Bramble persona intervening in a particularly masculine, urban, and
political sphere, and doing so in a particularly aggressive manner, spe-
cifically attacking Pitt and his ministry, the second batch of 1800
finds the persona functioning in an ostensibly fictional, narrative,
comic, and didactic mode that finds its objectives in the feminine,
rural, and domestic. However, several other poems from 1800 signed
“Tabitha Bramble” or “T.B.” diverge starkly from both of these kinds
of poems: lyrics such as “Lesbia and Her Lover” (2: 52–3), “The
Beau’s Remonstrance” (69–70), and “Taste and Fashion” (97–8)
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 183

cultivate an urbane voice for the avatar that bears no resemblance to


the Tabitha Bramble of the political satires or the poetic tales. Some
comic pieces echo the voice of the spinster persona and similarly
ridicule “peevish” old women, including “When I Was Young” (2:
89–90; 1) and “The Grey-Beard” (92–3). Other poems that appear
with the “T.B.” signature are not even comic at all, such as “Pretty
Susan” (2: 110–1), “The Summer Day” (113–4), “Written During
the Late Stormy Weather” (138). And another, “The Admonition”
(140–2), is a love lyric “after the manner of the antient poets” writ-
ten explicitly in a male voice but signed “T.B.” The haphazardness of
these signatures gives the impression that Robinson submitted the
poems to Stuart and he gave them whatever signature he saw fit, per-
haps to give the illusion of a multiplicity of voices.
Indeed, almost all of Robinson’s avatars reappear during this final
year, including Julia, Oberon, Laura Maria, Laura, and Sappho, plus
a couple of new ones, Lesbia and Bridget, that seem interchangeable
with any of the others. The poems signed with these avatars all echo
their previous textual incarnations but never in a fully integrated way
in order to construct a coherent character. Robinson, for example,
revived her Laura Maria avatar for the purpose of poetic correspon-
dence with male friends such as Wolcot and Pratt, suggesting that
she viewed that signature as a refraction of her social, networking
self as it had once been with Robert Merry.10 She does also seem to
have reserved the “Laura Maria” or “L.M.” signatures for her more
sentimental, melancholy, or morally instructive pieces.11 One ode,
“Ode To Winter,” from December of 1799, matches the style and
substance of her Oracle odes from years earlier (2: 15–6). Overall,
though, the poems associated with the Laura Maria avatar gener-
ally are interchangeable with those she signed with her own name
or her initials. But that is, after all the point of the avatar. They are
all Mrs. Robinson. Toward the end of her life, one poem, “The Old
Shepherd. A Tale,” even appeared in the Monthly Magazine prefaced
as “By MRS. ROBINSON” but signed at the end “Tabitha Bramble”
(2: 123–4). This further suggests that the “feigned signature” is just
another formal feature of the poem.

To Undertake the Poetical Department


“You must contribute, Brain!” Robert Southey, in his charming lyric
“The Poet Perplext,” addresses not only his brain but also the rig-
ors of composing original poetry twice a week for Daniel Stuart’s
Morning Post and Gazetteer. This poem provides some insight into
184 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

the challenges of running the “Poetical Department” for Stuart and


the regular demand to fill space in the paper when it was required.
“The Poet Perplext” first appeared in the Morning Post of 24 June
1799. Southey was over a year into his position as Stuart’s principal
poetry contributor, which he called, perhaps a bit facetiously, his first
“laureateship.” When Southey left for Portugal in December of 1799,
Stuart hired Robinson to replace him. As chief poetic correspondent
or contributor, the poet so designated was responsible for amusing
the paper’s readership with a variety of short poems, which the writ-
ers did using various pseudonyms and forms. When she succeeded
Southey, Robinson produced during the final year of her life nearly
one-quarter of the total number of poems in her entire oeuvre, prov-
ing that, despite her periodic infirmity, her mind was fertile and vig-
orous and her sense of humor was intact.
Undertaking the poetical department of the paper, Southey and
Robinson were not the editors of a section of the newspaper so much
as they were the entertainers of its audience. The position required
improvisational wit and speedy and prolific composition—thus, in
“The Poet Perplext,” Southey comically exhorts his brain to work.
This poem, however, is more than a self-reflexive study in writer’s
block; it is also a reminder that newspaper poetry of the 1790s served
a purpose much like that of the comics section in today’s newspapers.
These poems are meant to be consumable and literally disposable.
The demands of writing this poetry are all on the poet; there should
not be demands placed on the readers to read it. As any comic knows,
laughter is more difficult to achieve than other affective endeavors,
which is why newspaper poems often opt for the erotic, maudlin, or
patriotic. Southey regarded “The Poet Perplext” as one of the poems
“too good to perish with the newspapers in which they are printed”
(Robberds 1: 239), so he reprinted it in volume 2 of The Annual
Anthology with the signature “Byondo,” a comically self-effacing ana-
gram for “nobody.” Later, though, Southey was embarrassed by much
of this writing and gathered the “minor poems” together with the
self-conscious disclaimer that “Nos haec novimus esse nihil,” or “We
know all this is nothing” (Trott 69). He did not finally think enough
of “The Poet Perplext” to admit it to his canon. The composition of
ephemeral poetry was a major element of the position Southey and
Robinson each held at Stuart’s paper, even if the products of such
composition were not held in esteem by the poets themselves.
Scholars, including myself, who have written about Robinson’s
tenure with Stuart frequently refer to the position as “poetry edi-
tor.” No scholar working on Southey, however, has ever characterized
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 185

his position as such. Since the 1990 publication of The Feminist


Companion to Literature in English, where she was first identified
as “poetry editor” (916), more than a dozen scholars, again includ-
ing myself, have made the assertion, in nearly identical words, that
Robinson succeeded Southey as poetry editor for the Morning Post.
Taking this for granted, as I prepared my edition of Robinson’s poetry,
I expected one day to go through the newspapers again to examine
more carefully the other poetry that appeared during her tenure as
“poetry editor,” figuring that this would provide new insight into
Robinson’s taste and literary judgment. I also assumed that Southey,
as her predecessor, would have performed similar duties, not just com-
posing but also selecting, rejecting, soliciting, and editing poetry for
the Post’s “Poetical Department.” This representation of her as poetry
editor most likely originates in Robert D. Bass’s The Green Dragoon:
The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (1957), which was
until recently the only remotely reliable biographical source available.
Bass twice refers to her as being responsible for editing the poetry page
(386, 394). Although Bass provides no citations for the source of this
information, he likely read a long biographical essay on Tarleton in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October of 1874 that describes
Robinson has having “been promoted to the superintendence of the
poetical department of the ‘Morning Post’ ” (“Sir Banastre Tarleton”
447). A similar remark appears in Smucker’s 1874 A History of the
Four Georges, Kings of England (327). So, since 1990, the claim that
Robinson was poetry editor has been repeated in almost every book
or article that discusses Robinson’s poetry and now even appears in
the headnotes to selections by Robinson in both the Norton and the
Longman anthologies of English literature.12 Of the recent commen-
taries, Stuart Curran’s account thus is the most accurate, writing that
Robinson “succeeded [Southey] as Daniel Stuart’s chief correspon-
dent to the ‘Poetical Department’ of the Morning Post when he left
for Portugal at the end of 1799” (“Mary Robinson’s Lyrical Tales”
19). Calling the position “poetry editor” makes Robinson sound
important, but no one working on Southey, to my knowledge, has
ever referred to his work for Stuart in this way.
As it turns out, neither of them was anything like what we think of
a “poetry editor” as being. Admittedly, calling Robinson “poetry edi-
tor” is an innocuous shorthand and is not completely inaccurate. And
it certainly does not depreciate the value of the most significant dis-
cussions of Robinson’s Morning Post period, such as in Judith Pascoe’s
Romantic Theatricality (163–83) or Judith Hawley’s essay “Romantic
Patronage: Mary Robinson and Coleridge Revisited.” Hawley, for
186 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

example, makes the important suggestion that “poetry editor” was not
an “exclusive job” and that “it is probably more accurate to think of
all three writers [Robinson, Coleridge, Southey] contributing in over-
lapping ways” (65). The job title matters little to Hawley’s argument
because she gets the job description right. But we ought to be cautious
of building arguments about Robinson’s career on the assumption
that the position was similar to a section editor for literary periodi-
cals today. For example, in a recent article, one critic writes, “Unlike
the little-known Wordsworth, Robinson (like Southey) already had
established a reputation as an important poet and (in her editorial role
at the Morning Post) a judge of poetry” (Wiley 224). Such a remark,
which is not germane to the writer’s argument, nonetheless takes for
granted that such a position was something other than what it really
was—an incestuous network of cohorts—as if Robinson were receiv-
ing blind submissions for review, accepting or rejecting poems accord-
ing to their merits. Clearly this was not the case.
The problem in understanding the nature of this work goes back
to the ludic quality of the newspaper poetry that all three poets con-
tributed, and how difficult it is to appreciate these texts today as
poems in their own right. Coleridge’s “Ode. To Georgiana, Duchess
of Devonshire” (24 December 1799) or Wordsworth’s “The Farmer
of Tilsbury Vale” (31 July 1800), both of which appeared during
Robinson’s stint with the Post, are not what we would call their most
distinguished literary productions. But if we can think of these poems
as appearing in a kind of ludic textual heterotopia, as I have suggested
we do for the Della Crusca network, the poems will take on a fresh
sheen (if not the patina of high culture). For example, other minor
poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth have connections to Robinson,
suggesting a playful network of exchange and public literary corre-
spondence that reveals a textual sociability among the three poets. In
October, while Robinson was nearing the end of her life but still con-
tributing two to three poems a week, Coleridge’s “The Voice from the
Side of Etna; or, The Mad Monk” and Wordsworth’s “The Solitude
of Binnorie, or the Seven Daughters of Lord Archibald Campbell”
appeared in the paper on successive days (13, 14 October 1800). The
former contains an oblique nod to Robinson’s 1794 “Anselmo, the
Hermit of the Alps” while making fun of Ann Radcliffe (“Ratcliff”);
the latter shows Wordsworth employing Robinson’s nonce form from
her poem “The Haunted Beach,” which appeared in the Morning
Post earlier that year. Similarly, when he learned of Robinson’s latest
illness, Coleridge repackaged an uncharacteristically erotic lyric by
Wordsworth as “Alcæus to Sappho” and sent it to Stuart as a tribute
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 187

and wink to Robinson (24 November 1800). I will discuss these


connections further in chapter five. But Coleridge’s correspondence
with Stuart proves that all of the above poems appeared not through
Robinson’s but through Coleridge’s agency. Stuart, moreover, likely
called upon Coleridge to supply poems in the ailing Robinson’s stead
(Letters 1: 629).
So, where does this notion of Robinson as “poetry editor” for
the Post come from? Referring to the final year of Robinson’s life,
the Memoirs state, “About this period she was induced to under-
take the poetical department for the editor of a morning paper,” the
Morning Post (7: 286). In the narrative of Robinson’s life, this state-
ment accords with the time, during the winter of 1799–1800, that
Southey quit the Post and left for his second visit to Portugal and
when an abundance of poems by Robinson begin to appear. If Samuel
Jackson Pratt is Maria Elizabeth’s collaborator on the continuation
of Robinson’s Memoirs after her death, then this remark may refer
to a surviving letter that the poet wrote to Pratt. Here, Robinson
apologizes for not providing a puff to Pratt’s own poem, “A Gleaner’s
Advertisement,” which appeared in the Morning Post of 16 August
1800 to promote the forthcoming second volume of his Gleanings in
England. She writes, “I never wish to have any introductions to my
own Poetry in the M.P. and therefore I thought of course that yours
did not require it. The merit of your lines speaking for themselves” (7:
321). This indicates that Robinson forwarded Pratt’s poem to Stuart
and implies that she had influence on the poetry in the Post and no
doubt on Stuart himself. Moreover, Robinson’s letter reminds Pratt
that she has “taken care, I believe twice, to announce The Gleanings
&c&c and on their publication I will do every thing that is right,
and just, and handsome about them” (7: 321). Robinson’s memory
is correct, for three short news items regarding the forthcoming sec-
ond volume of Gleanings had already appeared (10 January, 12 July,
and 16 August). Robinson, moreover, had written a tributary poem
to the first volume of Gleanings that appeared in the Post on 25 July
1799, during Southey’s tenure, and, had she lived, no doubt would
have written another. She was not averse to helping out her friends,
which is very much what working on the Post seems to have entailed.
If a friend shared a poem with her, she would send it to Stuart. As
she writes to her friend Jane Porter in June or July of 1800, “I sent
your charming lines to Stuart, and I am certain that, both he and
the public, will rejoice in my having done what your graceful dif-
fidence declined doing” (7: 312). The poem in question likely was
“The Seventh of July,” signed “Sabrina,” appearing in the Post 14
188 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

July 1800. But the chief responsibility for filling that space rested
on Robinson’s shoulders, severely taxing her as her health declined.
Letters recently republished by Sharon Setzer show that Stuart nearly
terminated her employment due to her illness and consequent failure
to contribute poetry (“ ‘Original’ ” 322). Because her work for Stuart
was her primary source of income during the last few months of her
life, and she was being besieged by creditors, she was horrified at the
prospect of losing her weekly salary:

I have of late been less useful to the paper than heretofore, and this
morning I received a letter from him, requesting permission to close the
partnership. Indeed I have for some weeks past laboured at the hazard
of my life, and have frequently written verses when my physician abso-
lutely forbade me the use of my pen. During near twelve months I have
incessantly labored for the paper. I could not continue those labors
with quite so much industry; and now that I most want the reward of
my toil, – the season of my harvest is over, and my prospects for the
present blighted! Such are the vicissitudes of literary occupations! I
am weary of them: and if I had a mountain hovel, with a certain and
regular income, however small, I would bid farewell to scribbling—for
ever. (qtd. in Setzer, “ ‘Original’ ” 322)

This accords with a remark in the Memoirs: “When necessitated by pain


and languor to limit her exertions, her unfeeling employers accused her
of negligence” (7: 288). Moreover and to the purpose, the letter empha-
sizes that the nature of her position was contributory, not editorial.13
Robinson, then, served not so much as the editor of a section in
the paper, but as one on whom Stuart depended to fill columns in
order to keep readers coming back for more. This duty extended to
procuring poetry in addition to what she herself was able to com-
pose, and to supplying news items about writers and celebrities with
whom she was familiar, including herself. We know that Stuart didn’t
publish everything that Southey, for instance, sent him, such as the
poems that appear in Letters from the Lake Poets to Stuart and “The
Guns Have Ceased their Thunder” in Lynda Pratt’s edition. Stuart
had the final word on what poems he published, although he cer-
tainly welcomed suggestions from his chief literary correspondents.
And, needless to say, neither correspondent was receiving unsolic-
ited submissions at their homes or in The Strand. During his tenure,
Southey was mostly in and around Bath, Bristol, and Burton with vis-
its to Nether Stowey and obligatory trips to London. And Robinson
was living with her daughter at Windsor, not a great distance away,
but where she was rendered essentially an invalid by paralysis and
illness. They clearly were correspondents in a literal sense: they sent
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 189

their contributions to Stuart via the post. Furthermore, Stuart does


not to seem to have printed unsolicited poetry, although he gives the
impression of accepting and rejecting certain submissions in its “To
Correspondents” column, as most other editors had done since the
days of the World. This practice likely was a ruse for promoting future
issues and for printing sardonic ripostes to would-be contributors—
again, as part of the mission of these pages to keep readers entertained
by a lively exchange of textual production and play.
Our misunderstanding of the position further results from a mis-
reading of what it means “to undertake” a “department” for the news-
paper. In 1838, James Gillman, in his Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
makes a claim similar to that in Robinson’s Memoirs, writing that “soon
after [Coleridge’s] return from Germany, the proprietor of the Morning
Post, who was also the editor, engaged Coleridge to undertake the lit-
erary department” (51). This echoes what Coleridge himself writes in
chapter 10 of the Biographia Literaria where he writes, “I was solicited
to undertake the literary and poetical department” (1: 212). Gillman
adds that “[a]s contributors to this paper, the editor had the assistance
of Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Lamb” (153). Gillman sin-
gles out Southey as having “powers best suited for such employment”
that “made him invaluable to the proprietor” (153). Although schol-
ars have not to my knowledge interpreted such remarks to mean that
Southey or Coleridge assumed an editorial position, scholars working
on Robinson have done so—almost as if the “poetical department”
consisted of a physical space, with cubicles perhaps, in the Morning Post
office in Catherine Street. It is, rather, a textual space in the paper itself
that is devoted to a particular genre of writing for a particular audience.
To be hired to undertake it, then, means to take responsibility for filling
that textual space, which is what Southey and Robinson consistently did
to earn their salaries. Each held positions that required the composition
of at least two original poems a week. Kenneth Curry’s list of Southey’s
contributions and conjectural attributions from January 16, 1798 until
December 20, 1799 contains more than 200 poems. Robinson served
half as long as Southey did, from his departure until her death on
December 26, 1800; her contributions number more than 100 poems
in 12 months, approximately half the number of poems Southey most
likely contributed. So, it is clear they were doing the same job.

A New Line of Succession


So, Robinson’s work for Stuart consists of three periods: 1) her ini-
tial contributions in the winter of 1797–8, consisting mostly of the
first batch of Tabitha Bramble poems; (2) a series of political poems
190 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

that appeared in the spring of 1798, at the start of Southey’s official


appointment, and which would become her long poem in blank verse,
posthumously published as The Progress of Liberty; and (3) her year as
Stuart’s chief poetry correspondent, or contributor, from December
of 1799 to November of 1800—her annus mirabilis—during which,
despite persistent and ultimately terminal illness, she composed and
published in the Post many of her best poems, including several that
respond to Lyrical Ballads and that comprise her own volume called
Lyrical Tales, a book that she described as her “favourite offspring”
(7: 318). The first two periods are not well understood, however, and
her year as Stuart’s laureate has occasioned some misunderstanding
regarding the nature of that position. While they are not her finest
poems, the first batch of Tabitha Bramble pieces certainly focused
Robinson’s political energies for what would be her most ambitious
poetic project since Sappho and Phaon, The Progress of Liberty. So,
for several months in the winter and spring of 1797–8, Robinson’s
poetry appears in a remarkable new and highly politicized con-
text and in a significant intertextual network with other poems by
Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. Here, Robinson’s first batch of
Tabitha Bramble poems, as well as numerous extracts from her novel
Walsingham, frame such radically inflected poems as Wordsworth’s
“The Convict,” which he signed “Mortimer” and which appeared in
Lyrical Ballads later in the year, and Coleridge’s “Fire, Famine, and
Slaughter: A War Eclogue,” which he signed “Laberius.” As John
Barrell notes, Coleridge’s pseudonym refers to Decimus Laberius,
a writer whom Julius Caesar forced to perform for his amusement;
Laberius took the opportunity to protest Caesar’s tyranny and to
predict the dictator’s death (Imagining 652). Coleridge’s signature
points to either Pitt, who figures directly in the poem, or, more trea-
sonably, to the King and thus adds an even more radical element to
an already vituperative allegory. The first batch of Tabitha Bramble
poems, odd as these poems seem among Robinson’s other poetry,
belongs here.
This period also marks the beginning of Coleridge’s poetic cor-
respondence with Robinson, whom he would not meet in person
until December of 1799. Coleridge wrote “The Apotheosis, or the
Snow-Drop” in response to Robinson’s poem “The Snow Drop,”
from Walsingham, which Stuart reprinted in the Morning Post on 26
December 1797. Coleridge’s poem appeared in the Morning Post on
3 January 1798 with the signature “Francini.” No copies of that day’s
paper are known to exist, but it appeared in Daniel Stuart’s other
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 191

newspaper The Express and Evening Chronicle on 9 January 1798.


There, “The Apotheosis, or the Snow-Drop” appears in a column
“FROM WALSINGHAM” below a reprint of Robinson’s “Stanzas,
to Fortune” and above a reprint of her poem “The Exile,” both
extracted from the novel.14 The column oddly thus gives the impres-
sion of Coleridge’s poem, which takes up most of the space, being
from Walsingham rather than being a response to Robinson’s poem,
which appeared in the Post along with his “Visions of the Maid of
Orleans, a Fragment,” which had been part of Coleridge’s contribu-
tion to Joan of Arc but which Southey excised for the second edi-
tion.15 Coleridge, not a reader of novels unless he was paid to review
them, undoubtedly read the poem in the paper where it is disembod-
ied from its representation in the novel as the composition of the male
protagonist, Walsingham (5: 22–3). Coleridge’s response betrays no
awareness of this and, as “Francini,” addresses Robinson in the poem
only as “Laura,” the avatar first associated with the Della Crusca
network. Carl Woodring connects the “Francini” signature to the
Francine family of Florence (124–5). But I would add that Coleridge
also makes a silly pun on the presumed Jacobinism of Stuart’s net-
work and nods to Robinson’s previous poetic admirers with Italianate
pseudonyms—“Della Crusca,” “Leonardo,” “Rinaldo,” “Arno,”
etc.—and to Merry’s own Florentine affiliations.16 Significantly, the
poem is then a playful rekindling of Della Cruscan poetic amours
as Coleridge pays tribute, somewhat condescendingly, to Robinson’s
“potent sorceries of song” (Express and Evening Chronicle 6–9 January
1798). Perhaps without intending to do so, Coleridge re-genders the
original poem as feminine, where in the novel it is at least fictionally
masculine. He thus fixes Robinson as a fragile flower, the first to
bloom and so to die, but revivified by his immortalizing gesture: as
he writes, “Fame unrebellious heard the charm, / And bore thee to
Pierian climes.” Although they were not yet acquainted, Coleridge
knew the way to Robinson’s heart. According to his friend Clement
Carlyon, Coleridge wrote the poem as a “way of making some amends
to her” for “abusing [her poetry] more than it deserved” (175). If
Carlyon’s memory serves, then Coleridge, with Carlyon in Germany
at the time, had yet to meet Robinson in person.17 Robinson appar-
ently was delighted with Francini’s poetic tribute and, ignorant of
Coleridge’s authorship, asked Stuart to forward to Francini a letter of
gratitude and a set of the four-volume Walsingham (Erdman, Essays
162). The relationship with Coleridge will prove to be quite signifi-
cant at the end of Robinson’s life, as we shall see in the next chapter.
192 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

The events that follow show that Southey actually replaced her as a
poetic correspondent. Around the beginning of 1798, reports in the
Post and in the Oracle indicate that Robinson had become severely ill.
Such a notice, for instance, appears in the Oracle on 15 January, the
day before Southey’s first poem for Stuart appears in the Post: “On
the Settlement of Sierra Leona” signed with his “Walter” pseudonym.
Robinson, due to her illness, likely was not able to contribute as many
poems as she and Stuart had hoped. For instance, Stuart reprints the
“St. James’s Street” poem on the Queen’s birthday, which Robinson
had published three years before in the Morning Post; it appears on
January 19 with the “T.B.” initials, although in January of 1795
Robinson had signed it “Portia.” The next day, Stuart puffs Robinson
yet again as “the English Sappho,” perhaps out of concern for her
health. Interestingly, the Post does not report on her illness until 10
days after the Oracle.
To me, this suggests that Stuart or Coleridge called upon Southey
to supply poetry in Robinson’s stead. We do know Southey needed
the money. By the time Robinson’s recovery is reported at the end
of February, Southey already has replaced her. The bulk of Stuart’s
“anecdotes” in the Gentleman’s Magazine are devoted to proving that
Coleridge was a delinquent contributor; but in the process of doing
so, he remarks on Southey’s dependability and writes, “He contrib-
uted freely pieces of poetry on a small salary” (577). Southey himself
referred to the position as a “laureateship,” long before his national one.
As early as 15 December 1799, Southey writes to Coleridge that he
has “written to Stuart and resigned the Laureateship” in order to focus
on Thalaba (New Letters 1: 207). This is the position that Robinson
assumes at around this time. Obviously, a laureateship is quite different
from an editorship. In an 1838 letter, Southey explains his responsibil-
ities: “In 1798 Stuart offered me a guinea a week to supply verses for
the Morning Post. . . . About 60 lines a week I thought a fair discharge”
(qtd. in Speck 71). When Stuart asserted in the Gentleman’s Magazine
that Southey supplied “a most satisfactory quantity” to make up for
Coleridge’s “deficiency” (486), Southey responded to Stuart, “My
engagement as your Poet-Laureate did not commence till 1798; and
the quantity which I supplied was never intended to be considered as
making up Coleridge’s deficiency.” He adds, “I never think of that
Laureateship without satisfaction. The guinea a week, while I held it,
came every quarter very seasonably in aid of slender means” (Letters
Lake Poets 434). Three decades earlier, Southey describes to William
Taylor his laureateship as “my grand apprenticeship to the craft and
mystery of verse-making” (Robberds 2: 133).
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 193

Although he never mentions Robinson, Southey’s defense of


Coleridge may be accurate: that is, it was not Coleridge’s debility that
occasioned his first contributions but Robinson’s. Southey did not
announce his appointment to his friend Charles Wynn until April,
but he was on the job as early as the end of January of 1798. This
is when Stuart actively promotes Southey and Robinson together.
For instance, on January 27, Stuart announces the rejection of an
implicit defense of Southey called “English Sapphics,” referring to
the Anti-Jacobin’s parody of Southey’s “The Widow,” with face-
tious irony: “that Publication being too contemptible for notice.”
In the same issue, he extracts a passage from Walsingham on Bristol
that also obliquely invokes Southey. And then, for confirmation of
this, on February 12, an item declares, “Bristol is remarkable as the
birth-place of POETIC GENIUS : The names of CHATTERTON, Mrs.
ROBINSON, Mr. SOUTHEY, Miss MORE , and Mrs. YEARSLEY, will
prove the assertion.” Stuart also reprints Robinson’s ballad “The
Doublet of Grey,” again from Walsingham, making an explicit con-
nection to Southey. Stuart’s headnote draws attention to “the Alonzo
meter,” referring to the ballad that appears interpolated in Lewis’s
The Monk, to prepare readers for the forthcoming Southey poem
“The Ring,” the composition of which may have been prompted
by the reprinting of “The Doublet of Grey,” also in “the Alonzo
meter,” and Stuart’s praise of it. By the end of February, a week after
the last poem of the first batch appeared, the Morning Post reported
that “Mrs. Robinson is sufficiently recovered from her late illness,
to resume her literary occupations” and a week later that “Mrs.
Robinson and Mrs. Inchbald are both again absorbed in literary
avocations.” I can only speculate about the veracity of these reports,
and suggest tentatively that they are some kind of publicity shield
for Tabitha Bramble. More concretely, these reports suggest to me
that Robinson is hard at work on the series of “Poetical Pictures”
that began appearing on April 7, and which would become her long
poem The Progress of Liberty.
Robinson only intermittently publishes original poetry in the
Morning Post during Southey’s laureateship. The “Poetical Pictures”
appeared anonymously and ran in six weekly installments until 18
May 1798. As the title of the reconstituted poems, The Progress of
Liberty, indicates, the poems are liberal, humanitarian, and opposi-
tional; moreover, these poems demonstrate Robinson’s proficiency
working in blank verse, if they also hearken back to the impassioned
elaborate diction characteristic of her early verse, a stylistic ten-
dency that was quickly to become outmoded.18 On 17 April, Stuart
194 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

announced the paper’s higher standards for poetry, which appears to


be a trumpeting of Southey’s commitment:

The POETRY of The Morning Post will in future be critically select.


None but first-rate compositions will be admitted to our columns; and
we are promised the aid of several of the most distinguished writers of
the present day. Thus powerfully supported, we request the attention
of the LITER ATI to this department of our Paper; where the enlight-
ened mind will not fail to receive ample gratification.

The previous day’s paper justifies such confidence, for here we see all
three poets in juxtaposition:

We anticipate the pleasure which our readers will receive from


the Second Number of the Poetical Pictures—‘THE PROGRESS OF
LIBERTY;’—it is drawn by the hand of a master, and conceived and
executed in the most vigorous stile of Poetry. It shall be inserted
to-morrow.
Mr. Coleridge has honoured us with an Ode, which, for justness of
thought, for strength of expression, and for poetical genius, is equal,
perhaps even superior, to any of his former productions
We wait for the conclusion of the very exquisite and romantic Poem of
St. Patrick’s Purgatory.

The second installment of Robinson’s Progress of Liberty appears the


next day; the first version of Coleridge’s “France, an Ode” appears
on April 16; and Southey’s “St. Patrick’s Purgatory” appears on
May 8. Over the next year or so, Robinson is hard at work on her
novel The False Friend, her polemical tract A Letter to the Women of
England, and her final novel, The Natural Daughter; she therefore
contributes only a couple of poems to the paper. Like Southey, she
understood that the bigger payday comes with a bigger work. This
dearth of Robinson poems, of course, coincides with an abundance
of Southey poems that appear from 16 January 1798 to 20 December
1799. Robinson begins contributing her satirical “Sylphid” essays to
the Post in October 1799, so she is already on board when Southey
disembarks.19
After his return from Germany, Coleridge contributed a few poems
to the Post, including his popular collaboration with Southey, “The
Devil’s Thoughts,” which appeared in September of 1799; shortly
thereafter, Coleridge accepted Stuart’s offer to write political prose as
a full-time staffer, moving his family to London in late November (at
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I 195

just around the time Wordsworth and Dorothy move to Grasmere).


Coleridge becomes involved in writing lead articles for the paper just
as Robinson takes over the responsibility for providing poetry. This is,
of course, the period during which Coleridge flirts with renewing his
Jacobinism, writes articles praising Napoleon and condemning Pitt,
dines with Godwin and other radicals, and, as the story goes, falls a
little in love with Mary Robinson. When Coleridge quit the Morning
Post temporarily for the Lake District and Greta Hall, Robinson was
hard at work filling Stuart’s columns with poems and gathering many
of them for her own Lyrical Tales. When she died at the end of 1800,
this much-heralded yet mysterious position of “poetry editor” went
unfilled. She obviously was irreplaceable.
Chapter 5

St ua r t ’s L au r e at e s I I:
A Wom a n of Un dou bt e d Ge n i us

She is a woman of undoubted Genius. There was a poem of her’s


[sic] in this Morning’s paper which both in metre and matter
pleased me much—She overloads every thing; but I never knew
a human Being with so full a mind—bad, good, & indifferent, I
grant you, but full, & overflowing.
—S.T. Coleridge to Robert Southey,
25 Jan. 1800 (Letters 1: 562)

If you have read anything about Mary Robinson’s poetry, you


know that Coleridge praised her as “a woman of undoubted
Genius.” I probably have reiterated Coleridge’s phrase at some
point during every presentation I have given on Robinson’s poetry.
Indeed, Coleridge’s assessment of Robinson’s genius has gov-
erned my approach to Robinson since I began reading her poetry.
Contemporary critics, friends, and associates frequently hailed
Robinson’s “genius,” so much so that it seems like an obligatory
gesture. Coleridge’s praise, however, is firmly connected to her for-
mal choices. In an important way, this book is predicated upon the
assertion of poetic form as a palpable manifestation of Robinson’s
genius, as Coleridge asserts.
Although from several years later, Joseph Collier’s record of
Coleridge’s distinction between “talent” and “genius” is relevant here
because it provides insight into the basis of Coleridge’s assessment
of Robinson’s poetry. According to Collier, Coleridge considered
198 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Southey’s Curse of Kehama to be “a work of great talent, but not of


much genius”; he adds that Coleridge

drew the distinction between talent and genius by comparing the first
to a watch and the last to an eye: both were beautiful, but one was
only a piece of ingenious mechanism, while the other was a production
above all art. Talent was a manufacture; genius a gift, that no labour
nor study could supply: nobody could make an eye, but anybody, duly
instructed, could make a watch. (qtd. in Foakes 136)

Could it be that, to Coleridge, Robinson was a better poet than


Southey? While I do not want to build too much on Collier’s report,
I do find it significant that Coleridge’s assessment of Robinson’s
genius, connected as it is to her metrical practice, points toward his
later appropriation of Schlegel’s theory of “organic” form that “shapes
as it developes from within” as opposed to “mechanic” form which is
“pre-determined” (Biographia 2: 84n). Toward the end of her career,
Robinson began inventing her own meters and forms, and the poems
Coleridge singles out for praise are poems in which she has eschewed
received forms in favor of her own. Her original meters then become,
in a sense, predetermined in that they provide a matrix for the poem;
but the poems succeed in Coleridge’s estimation because the form she
invents is particularly appropriate to the poem. And, despite all of the
acclaim Robinson received during the 1790s, it is Coleridge’s remarks
on the technicalities of her poetic skills that get at precisely what it is
that makes Robinson’s poetry unique. To put it simply, although her
biography and career are fascinating in many ways, her technical virtu-
osity is, as Coleridge recognized, her greatest strength as a poet. As his
letter to Southey suggests, Coleridge was interested in Robinson’s mind
and how it worked—it is “full and overflowing,” he says. Coleridge
thus marvels at the way Robinson attempts to express and to contain
her abundant imagination within her “fascinating” meters.
Coleridge, a younger poet by some fourteen years, greatly admired
the “metre” and “matter,” the style and substance, of Robinson’s verse
and, in the letter quoted in the preceding, urged Southey to include
her poem “Jasper” in the second volume of his Annual Anthology.
Southey did so, along with her poem “The Haunted Beach,” “a
poem of fascinating Metre” also recommended by Coleridge (Letters
1: 575–6). The poem Coleridge specifically refers to in the epigraph
above is Robinson’s “The Poor Singing Dame,” which appeared in
the Morning Post on 25 January 1800, shortly after Robinson became
Stuart’s chief correspondent to the paper’s poetical department.
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 199

Coleridge’s remark that Robinson “overloads every thing” certainly


refers to her formal, technical extravagance, an undeniable lyrical
ebullience that Robinson exhibits from her juvenile verse to the poetry
she wrote in the final year of her life. As Coleridge remarks, “The
Poor Singing Dame” succeeds on two grounds—“meter and matter.”
Furthermore, his comments on “The Haunted Beach,” a poem at
least partly inspired by “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” dem-
onstrate his view that achievement in the one may mitigate fault in the
other. According to Coleridge, this poem “wants Tale—& Interest,”
by which he means that the poem’s “matter” or substance is lacking.
In addition to appreciating its “fascinating Metre,” however, he finds
that its “Images are new & very distinct” and regrets that “it should
seem so bad—for it is really good.” Despite these flaws, it is the meter
that redeems the poem, according to Coleridge: it may not be a suc-
cessful tale because it does not relate an interesting story, “but the
Metre—ay! that Woman has an Ear” (Letters 1: 576). This kind of
subordination of narrative to the style and subjectivity of the lyric is
of the utmost importance to the study of Romanticism, particularly
at the end of the eighteenth century. Before we examine what exactly
Coleridge liked about these three poems, and how his appreciation
reveals not only certain affinities between Robinson and himself but
also the significance of Robinson’s innovations, we need to consider
what “meter” meant for Coleridge and, subsequently, the relationship
between Romantic narrative poetry and Robinson’s invention of her
own “fascinating” meters, or poetic forms.
My own fascination with Robinson’s poetry has always been driven
by the fact that Coleridge was fascinated by it, and by the astonishing
fact that he thought enough of her to share with her an early ver-
sion of his masterpiece, the famous poem “Kubla Khan.” Even more
remarkable, she wrote a poetic response to “Kubla Khan,” “Mrs.
Robinson to the Poet Coleridge” just a few months before her death
in 1800. This poem appeared in print in 1801, a decade and a half
before the publication of “Kubla Khan” in 1816. It matters to me
that Coleridge shared this poem with Robinson before (as far as we
know) he shared it with Southey, Lamb, or at last Byron, who encour-
aged him ultimately to publish it. Her poem to Coleridge reveals,
moreover, that Robinson understood aspects of “Kubla Khan” that
no one else, at least in print, would begin to understand until John
Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu in 1927. This chapter, and
this book, will close then with a reading of Robinson’s response to
“Kubla Khan,” showing that Robinson was the first to understand
and appreciate “Kubla Khan” as a poem about the poetic imagination.
200 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

Moreover, her own poetry reveals that she, like Coleridge, was inter-
ested in the relationship between the workings of the poetic imagina-
tion and their manifestation in innovative poetic forms.1

Ay! that Woman has an Ear


At the time of his writing to Southey, Coleridge and Robinson had
only recently met in person. William Godwin’s diary corroborates that
the letter quoted above, from 25 January, finds Coleridge in the midst
of socializing with Godwin and Robinson, taking tea and supper with
them on 15 January, 18 January, and 22 February 1800 (Davenport
204, 253). In a recently discovered letter to his friend Samuel Purkis,
written most likely toward the end of February of 1800, Coleridge
exclaims, “I have passed some hours with Mrs Inchbald, have spent a
long Evening (from 7 to 1) with Charlotte Smith—have been at Mrs
Barbauld’s—and Mrs Robinson & I are quite Intimate.—There’s a
list of Illustrissimae!” (Whelan 25). Robinson seems to receive special
recognition here. However, as provocative as this suggested intimacy
may be, we can only speculate on its erotic dimension. Coleridge’s
enthusiasm for Robinson’s poetry may have been charged by the fresh-
ness of his personal acquaintance with her and perhaps by a touch of
frisson. Without a doubt, understanding his response to her is com-
plicated by a host of other issues, among them her highly sexualized
and politicized celebrity, his own issues regarding female sexuality,
and his other remarks about Robinson here and elsewhere, which are,
by turns, chivalric, judgmental, sympathetic, and patronizing. Susan
Luther contends that Coleridge’s response to Robinson as a poet
“can be difficult to separate from his response to her as a woman”
(392). For example, regarding the inclusion of “Jasper” in the Annual
Anthology, “I think,” he tells Southey, “you will agree with me; but
should you not, yet still put it in, my dear fellow! for my sake, &
out of respect to a Woman-poet’s feelings” (Letters 1: 562–3). Such a
plea may seem condescending to us today, but I read it as rhetorical:
Coleridge surely intended the remark as a gesture of sympathy for her
hardships and of support for her career, as well as a show of confidence
in his own judgment should Southey disagree. Whatever Coleridge’s
indeterminable subconscious motives, these ought not to override or
discount his judgment as a reader and writer of poetry. As Timothy
Whelan, who published this particular letter, suggests, “The intimacy
Coleridge claims at this point may have less to do with romantic love
and more with an artistic infatuation” (30). Given Robinson’s poor
health and immobility, an erotic fixation seems preposterous. I think
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 201

it more likely that Coleridge was charmed by the vivacity of Robinson’s


mind and by his own assessment of her poetry.
Coleridge is, as he says, “pleased” by her forms. For Coleridge,
form and meter work as a concrete representation of the poem’s “mat-
ter” in such a way as to create a physical and imaginative response
of pleasure. Robinson’s forms are exciting to him because he can
account for what she has done in the construction of them but not
precisely how they achieve their effect. He admits of the ineffabil-
ity of his pleasure when he remarks on “The Haunted Beach” that
“it is unfortunate it should seem so bad—for it is really good.” His
analytical powers fail him here. The poetic and the erotic work in
tandem; poetry is supposed to give imaginative and even physical
pleasure. Robinson’s metrical practice is a manifestation of her phys-
icality, particularly in the heightened technical exhilaration evident
in her approach to form and versification. Her first publisher, Bell, a
pioneer in book design and production, attempted to represent the
sensuousness of her poetry through distinctive printing features,
as we have seen. In this way, even the printing of her poetry pro-
vides a visual representation of the extent to which the impact—
the pleasure—depends upon metrical effects. And, as I.A. Richards
long ago reminded us, the effect of meter is not found outside of
ourselves but within our bodies; he calls it “a vast cyclic agitation
spreading all over the body, a tide of excitement pouring through
the channels of the mind” (46). Robinson’s poetry possesses formal
qualities that serve no other purpose than excitement and pleasure.
Of course, Richards is partly echoing Coleridge, who, in the conten-
tious chapter 18 of the Biographia Literaria, insists that “the critic is
entitled to expect” the following conditions “in every metrical work”:

First, that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of


increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by
the natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements
are formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design
and for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces
of present volition should throughout the metrical language be pro-
portionally discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled
and co-present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an
interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of
voluntary purpose. (2: 65)

Setting aside Coleridge’s dispute with Wordsworth’s preface to


Lyrical Ballads, this reconciliation seems an unremarkable requisite
for poetry, derivative perhaps of Pope’s “the sound must seem an
202 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

echo of the sense,” except for Coleridge’s emphasis on the poet’s


ability to “artificially” manufacture, through versification, metrical
excitement and energy—a quality he saw Robinson’s poetry possess-
ing in abundance. The passage above emphasizes craftsmanship and
deliberateness as well as the mandatory possession of a particular
skill, “an ear,” for the achievement of poetic effects. As Coleridge
writes, sounding conspicuously (and unintentionally) in agreement
with Wordsworth, meter controls “the workings of passion” in a “bal-
ance of antagonists” that is deliberately formulated “for the foreseen
purpose of pleasure” (2: 64). As Stephen Parrish reminds us, pleasure
is central to the metrical principles of both poets; their difference is
not so much the effect of meter but whether or not it has value dis-
tinct from the language in which the poet expresses it (“Wordsworth
and Coleridge on Meter”). For Coleridge especially, this pleasure is
ineffable: notoriously difficult to analyze, to explain, or to teach. In
explaining the “effects of metre,” Coleridge adds,

As far as metre acts in and for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity
and susceptibility both of the general feelings and of the attention.
This effect it produces by the continued excitement of surprize, and by
the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited,
which are too slight indeed to be at any one moment objects of distinct
consciousness, yet become considerable in their aggregate influence. As
a medicated atmosphere, or as wine during animated conversation; they
act powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. (Biographia 2: 66)

The effect Coleridge describes is not unlike Wordsworth’s explana-


tion of meter’s power “to divest language in a certain degree of its
reality, and thus to throw a sort of half consciousness of unsubstantial
existence over the whole composition” (755n). Or to put it another
way, meter is a manifestation of the art of poetry, its un-reality, a
touch of verbal and formal surrealism. In his remarkable simile, he
compares meter to “yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but giv-
ing vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is proportionally
combined” (Biographia 2: 67). While the pleasure of meter is sub-
liminal, Coleridge asserts that it is contingent upon the relationship
between style and substance: The pleasure, he says, is “conditional,
and dependent on the appropriateness of the thoughts and expres-
sions, to which the metrical form is superadded” (Biographia 2: 69).
Coleridge characteristically is interested in the subconscious work-
ings of metrical practice as it acts upon the conscious reception of the
poetic work. Coleridge finds that her ear works in tandem with her
“full and overflowing” mind as expressed in the poetry.
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 203

To Coleridge, Robinson’s “ear” is a metonym for her ability to cre-


ate pleasurable sounds through the arrangement of syllables, words,
lines, and rhymes and to present these features in stanzaic form.2 It is
important to remember that the term metre, particularly for poets at
the end of the eighteenth century, denotes not only the metrical fea-
tures of a poetic line, or meter, which Coleridge and others frequently
call measure, but metre also refers to the stanzaic matrix that governs
the shape, if you will, of the structural units of a poem. In the two
letters to Southey, when he writes in praise of Robinson’s “metre,”
Coleridge means that he is favorably impressed not only by the way
she manages her “numbers,” or the stressed syllables per line, but also
by the construction of the nonce stanzas she employs in the develop-
ment of the three poems he singles out for approbation: “The Poor
Singing Dame,” “Jasper,” and “The Haunted Beach.”
In these poems, Robinson achieves her metrical effects through
the construction of her own unusual nonce forms. A nonce form is an
original form that a poet constructs for a particular poem, which is
then recognizable as peculiar to that poem or poet. When the nonce
form is appropriated by subsequent poets, it becomes eponymous as
a received form. The most famous example of this in English poetry
is the Spenserian stanza but obviously other examples include the
Pindaric ode, the Petrarchan sonnet, Alcaics, Sapphics, Hudibrastics,
Skeltonics, etc. The second half of the eighteenth century saw the
revival of the Pindaric and Horatian odes, the Spenserian stanza, and,
later, thanks largely to Robinson herself, the Petrarchan sonnet, but the
1790s in particular witnessed poets inventing new forms. As a writer,
Robinson worked in nearly every genre and form at her disposal; her
practice of creating her own forms, shared by many of her compeers,
arises out of her interest in fixed forms which emerged around the
middle of her career, as exemplified by Sappho and Phaon.
After proving her worth in a “legitimate” form, her ambition was
too great and her “ear” too sophisticated to miss the opportunities
for fame presented by the nonce stanza. As “the English Sappho,” she
wanted to be recognized by her own nonce-cum-eponymous form as
her poetic namesake was, and she knew well that the most popular
eponymous form of the 1790s was the “Alonzo meter,” named for the
stanza of M.G. Lewis’s romance ballad “Alonzo the Brave and Fair
Imogine” from his 1796 novel, The Monk. Before we look closely at
the three poems Coleridge specifically admired, we need to examine
the significance of this formal innovation and metrical experimentation
at the end of Robinson’s career. The features that Coleridge praises
in Robinson are directly related to the success of the “Alonzo meter”
and the revival of interest in the ballad and accentual meter—poetic
204 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

practices that are comparable with his own and which were shared by
contemporary working poets, including Robinson. In the poems under
consideration, Robinson’s practice derives, in other words, directly from
Lewis’s, but Lewis’s practice must also be viewed as part of a larger
context involving prosody and poetic form in the romantic ballad.

Idle and Extravagant Stories in Verse


By “romantic ballad,” I mean to explicitly employ period-specific ter-
minology. What we now think of as the rise of the gothic novel in
the 1790s, in its original context, was for readers of the time a craze
for supernatural romances. This is the “degrading thirst after out-
rageous stimulation” that Wordsworth condemns in the preface to
Lyrical Ballads. There, he complains that “the works of Shakespeare
and Milton are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stu-
pid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in
verse” (747). As Michael Gamer has shown, Wordsworth’s enterprise
here is to reject, or at least to obfuscate, the influence of these popular
romances on his own 1800 book (Romanticism 119). He especially
means to distance his narrative poems—the “lyrical ballads”—from
the “deluges of idle and extravagant stories and verse,” or supernatu-
ral metrical romances such as “Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine.”3
It is such stories in verse that concern us here, because Coleridge’s
appreciation of Robinson’s form catches her participating in this
trend, out of which her Lyrical Tales as well as his and Wordsworth’s
Lyrical Ballads was born. And it is worth noting that the three poems
Coleridge praises are directly influenced by Lyrical Ballads and by
the romantic ballad as popularized by Lewis. Even after his fiction
became passé, Lewis continued to receive praise for his innovative
stanza. Reviewing the eighteenth-century ballad revival from the van-
tage point of 1830, Walter Scott, in his “Essay on Imitations of the
Ancient Ballad,” which prefaces his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
commended Lewis for his innovations in narrative poetry, particu-
larly the form of his “Alonzo the Brave”:

In his poetry as well as his prose, Mr Lewis had been a successful


imitator of the Germans, both in his attachment to the ancient ballad
and in the tone of superstition which they willingly mingle with it.
New arrangements of the stanza, and a varied construction of verses,
were also adopted and welcomed as an addition of a new string to the
British harp. In this respect, the stanza in which “Alonzo the Brave” is
written, was greatly admired, and received as an improvement worthy
of adoption into English poetry. (34)
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 205

Coleridge predicted as much when he reviewed The Monk in February


of 1797 for the Critical Review. While Coleridge was generally
appalled by most of the novel, he does reserve some mild praise for
Lewis’s poetry as “far above mediocrity.” Closing the review with the
poem “The Exile,” extracted from the novel, Coleridge addresses an
underlying concern similar to Wordsworth’s—that such popular stuff
may overshadow more literature of greater merit and legitimacy; the
“exquisitely tender elegy,” Coleridge asserts, “will melt and delight
the heart, when ghosts and hobgoblins shall be found only in the
lumber-garret of a circulating library” (198). In Coleridge’s review
of The Monk, we see him privileging the techniques of lyric versifi-
cation over the ephemeral pleasures of sensational fiction, or what
would have seemed to the poet the elegance of formal construction
versus the mere scribbling of a story. Poetically minded critics such as
Coleridge possessed tools for appreciating Lewis’s versification, but
lacked a coherent perspective on this popular new genre. Robinson
knew that she had to please such critics.
Robinson certainly was one to take note of another poet’s suc-
cess in a particular form. Around the time that Lewis’s The Monk
was causing such a sensation, she had also begun inventing her own
forms, such as in the three poems Coleridge praises to Southey.
Robinson’s practice of creating her own forms comes from her formal
extravagance, but it also derives from her experience as a novelist.
It is no mere coincidence that the most practiced eponymous form
of the 1790s comes from a novel. Writers such as Robinson, Lewis,
Charlotte Smith, and Ann Radcliffe frequently interpolated poems
throughout their novels. According to most reviewers, Robinson’s
interpolated poems were the highlights of reading her fiction because
they appeared more carefully constructed than the narrative context
in which they are set. Robinson also knew that interspersing poetry
throughout works of prose fiction increased the likelihood of atten-
tion in the press, because these poems were more easily excerpted
from the work and reprinted, as Coleridge’s review of The Monk and
most reviews of her novels demonstrate. If not integral to the devel-
opment of plot, they occasionally served the development of the char-
acters who supposedly penned them and provided an entertaining
respite from the frequently convoluted and seemingly chaotic nar-
ratives Robinson, for one, tended to provide. Radcliffe and Lewis
were particularly inventive and innovative in achieving such formal
spectacles. For example, Radcliffe’s 1791 novel The Romance of the
Forest and her 1794 blockbuster The Mysteries of Udolpho feature her
peculiar eighteen-line sonnets. Robinson’s lyrical ebullience naturally
206 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

drew her toward such formal innovation and extravagance. In other


words, she cannot merely write a novel and she cannot merely inter-
polate a poem into that novel; each poem has to be a showpiece.4
“Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine” certainly was a showpiece
and went on to have a life of its own. Frequently extracted and
reprinted, the poem also was adapted into a play in 1796 and a ballet
in 1797. Narrative poems from popular novels frequently appeared,
and so were read, in completely different and multiple contexts; they
were often meant to stand on their own. Southey, for instance, could
comfortably dismiss The Monk as a work of prose fiction while admir-
ing “Alonzo and Imogine,” which he calls “a poem deservedly popu-
lar,” as well as employing Lewis’s form for his own ballad “Mary
[the Maid of the Inn]” (Poems 162). Moreover, in a letter to Charles
Wynn, Southey mentions that he has composed his poem “The
Ring” in “the Alonzo meter” (Life and Correspondence 102). When
these poems appeared in print, readers could recognize Lewis by
this peculiar poetic form and its metrical effects—a version of poetic
fame that would have been attractive to Robinson as she continually
shaped her own career with greater confidence as a working writer.
The “Alonzo” stanza became so ubiquitous that Lewis himself even
parodied it as “Giles Jollup the Grave and Brown Sally Green” in a
footnote to the poem in later editions of The Monk.
Robinson’s narrative poem “The Doublet of Grey” likewise
employs “the Alonzo meter.” Its appearance in her novel Walsingham
reminded one reviewer, who was otherwise unimpressed with the
book, that “Mrs. R.’s claims to poetic merit are respectable,” add-
ing “we would recommend to her the peculiar cultivation of this
enchanting talent”; the reviewer recognized “The Doublet of Grey”
as “a poem in the measure of Lewis’s Alonzo and Imogene” and
as having “considerable merit” (83). When “The Doublet of Grey”
appeared excerpted in the Morning Post, Stuart prefaced it with the
following headnote:

The following Poem has made as powerful an impression, as the two


preceding Tales of “A LONZO AND I MOGENE,” and “THE M AID OF THE
I NN.” In the same stanza, Mr. LEWIS led the way, Mr. SOUTHEY fol-
lowed, and Mrs. ROBINSON, with undiminished effect, proves, that
this return of rhyme is the best of all others suited to the pathos of
Romance. (15 February 1798)

This is how eponymous forms work, establishing a lineage of legiti-


macy: if a later poet succeeds admirably enough in the form, then
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 207

he or she partakes of its already established fame. Furthermore, this


manner of reading such interpolated poems as “Alonzo and Imogine”
and “The Doublet of Grey” out of their original contexts freed the
narrative poem from its more unsavory fictional connections and
influenced a whole tradition of Romantic verse-narrative. Lewis’s
success with “the Alonzo meter” provided Robinson with a model
that inspired her poetic composition in the final years of her life. This
single poem and its peculiar meter would go on to have a greater
impact on subsequent (Romantic) poets’ approaches to form than it
has received credit for having done.
Lewis’s “Alonzo meter” also provides a useful touchstone for
explaining how Coleridge, Robinson, Southey, and Stuart recognized
and appreciated new shapes and sounds in these innovative forms.
Doing so foregrounds some aspects of poetic practice that we oth-
erwise might overlook, but which are germane to Coleridge’s praise
of Robinson’s robust metrical practice. The popularity of antiquarian
poetry inspired a tendency in narrative poetry and ballads for poets
to work in more intrinsically English and Germanic rhythmic quali-
tative or accentual lines that replicate the feel of an oral tradition of
minstrelsy. This is not to say that English poets forego foot verse, but
they begin counting stresses in their lines instead of the total number
of syllables. This is how Coleridge arrives at the “new principle” he
articulates in his preface to “Christabel” (1816). Clarifying that the
poem’s meter is not “properly speaking, irregular,” Coleridge explains
that he has founded it on “a new principle: namely, that of counting
in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary
from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be
only four” (vii). Similarly, he wrote to Byron in 1815 that “I count
by Beats or accents instead of syllables—in the belief that a metre
might be thus produced sufficiently uniform & far more malleable
to the Passion & Meaning” (Letters 4: 603). These practices reflect
the influence of German theories that linguistically suit the accentu-
ally nuanced native rhythms of the English language derived from
the Germanic Anglo-Saxon. The gothic romance obviously depends
upon the medieval for its atmosphere, so the poems that emerge out
of it also reveal the influence of the eighteenth-century ballad revival
and similar experimentation with the traditional ballad stanza and
its meter. These poems look back to the more rugged folk meters of
medieval ballads, before the influence of syllabic continental verse
and Chaucer’s adaptation of those principles. Obviously, the gothic
elements of poems such as Lewis’s “Alonzo and Imogine” derive
from Percy’s Reliques—“Sweet William’s Ghost,” for instance—and
208 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

coincide with the popularity of Gottfried August Bürger’s ballads,


“Lenora” and “The Lass of Fair Wone,” as translated by William Taylor
of Norwich in 1796, a year that saw four other translations, includ-
ing one by Poet Laureate Henry James Pye and one by Walter Scott.
When Percy writes that the “old Minstrel-ballads” are “extremely
incorrect, and run into the utmost license of metre,” he is addressing
the fact that their rhythms do not correspond to accentual-syllabic
metrical feet and are thus metrically uncouth (xxii). Percy recognized
that later ballads gradually became more “lyrical” in that they were
more metrically correct. But Taylor’s translations of Bürger’s ballads
into English, for example, deliberately reject foot verse in favor of
syncopated effects that resist conventional scansion. Taylor employs
the standard English ballad form, the four-line stanza (x4a3x4a3) that
also had been revived in popularity by Thomas Chatterton, writing in
the guise of a fifteenth-century minstrel “Thomas Rowelie,” specifi-
cally in his ballad the “Bristowe Tragedie: or the Dethe of Syr Charles
Bawdin” (1777). As Taylor’s translations show, the German phonic
influence reinforced the accentual nature of the ballad stanza found
in Percy’s more (although not wholly) authentic Reliques.
The “Alonzo meter,” too, embedded as it is in the gothic, empha-
sizes the heavy accents of the older English ballads. So, what Paul
Fussell identifies as the new “technique of trisyllabic substitution”
in the 1790s, appearing “almost as if by some strange conspiracy,”
is actually an emphasis on the rhythms of English poetry taking
precedence over the syllabic count (148). Fussell is not incorrect to
refer to “trisyllabic substitution” because we do recognize in the
scansion of “the Alonzo meter” a strong tendency toward anapes-
tic sounds, giving the impression that the syllabic count is hyper-
metrical. But, unlike hypermetrical iambic pentameter lines, which
usually have an augmented or feminine ending, these lines always
end on a beat, or stressed syllable. For instance, the first, third, and
fourth lines of the five-line “Alonzo” stanza are the longest lines
per stanza, consisting of eleven or twelve syllables each; but these
lines, in order for them to have the characteristic rhythmic bounce,
contain no more than four stresses. To measure these lines as foot
verse would involve elaborate anapestic and dactylic substitutions in
irregular placement from line to line; it is more likely that Lewis and
his imitators are listening for the stresses in these lines. Similarly,
the shorter second and fifth lines, as part of the overall sonic effect,
employ the same principle but on a smaller scale: they run to eight
or nine syllables while only expressing three stresses or beats. The
“Alonzo” stanza may be represented as a4b3a4a4b3, the operative
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 209

number being the stress count. What is difficult to grasp about


“the Alonzo meter” is that its practitioners understood that a gen-
erally anapestic feel was essential, while not prescriptive, so they
aimed for a syllabic disproportion in the number of unstressed syl-
lables to stressed ones. More unstressed syllables emphasize the
beat of the poem. Robinson’s “The Doublet of Grey,” like “Alonzo
the Brave and Fair Imogine,” is a supernatural tale of violence and
star-crossed lovers, and thus metrically and thematically echoes its
original:

XXII.
Now o’er the wild heath when the winter winds blow,
And the moon-silver’d fern branches wave,
Pale Theodore’s spectre is seen gliding slow,
As he calls on the damsel in accents of woe,
Till the bell warns him back to his grave.

XXIII.
And while the deep sound echoes over the wood,
Now the villagers shrink with dismay;
For, as legends declare, where the castle once stood,
Mid the ruins, by moonlight, all cover’d with blood,
Shrieks the maid—in her doublet of grey! (5: 303; 106–15)

The meter reveals the same kind of heavy stress found in Lewis’s origi-
nal. Like “Alonzo the Brave,” most of the lines have a strong anapestic
sound, suggestive of metrical feet, but the syllabic count is often irregu-
lar in the poem and the initial unstressed syllable in many lines is trun-
cated. Considering its gothic subject, it seems more likely that Robinson
is counting stresses, falling invariably into anapests for rhythmic effect,
as a way of capturing the same kind of effect Lewis achieves.
As we can see, by 1816, Coleridge’s “new principle” was not new at
all, although some of the more extreme instances of its practice may
have been, as was the poet’s clear articulation of it in the preface to
“Christabel.” “Christabel” was his attempt to distance himself from
the stanzaic regularity of the ballad, traditional or innovative. In the
Biographia Literaria, published in 1817, the year after the Christabel
volume appeared, Coleridge remarked that “new metres,” specifi-
cally that of “Alonzo and Imogen [sic]” have “in their very mech-
anism a specific overpowering tune, to which the generous reader
humours his voice and emphasis, with more indulgence to the author
than attention to the meaning or quantity of the words” (2: 34). He
means that the stanzaic matrix will cause readers to recognize and
210 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

“hear” the suggested rhythm in a line rather than placing emphasis


where it ought to go, resulting in demoted stress on nouns and verbs
and promoted stress on articles and conjunctions just to achieve the
melody. It appears that Coleridge’s enthusiasm for Robinson’s ear
springs from the way Robinson’s innovative stanzas, combined with
the heavy rhythms of accentual meter, suit the effect of fantasy or, as
Stuart puts it, “the pathos of Romance.”
This is a major point of connection between the two poets, however:
both Robinson and Coleridge employ versification as a conscious fixing
of the unconscious in and as form. Coleridge wrote in his notebooks
that “Poetry is a rationalized dream” that puts “to manifold Forms
our own Feelings” (2: 2087). Coleridge’s most innovative poems at
this time, “Kubla Khan,” “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” and
“Christabel,” clearly demonstrate his interest in the gothic insofar as
its nightmarish qualities may be adapted for explorations of the uncon-
scious. Although it is her formal handling of this material that he specif-
ically praises, Robinson’s adaptation of the gothic for similar purposes
surely appealed to him; she validated an aesthetic interest in the super-
natural that neither Wordsworth nor Southey shared with Coleridge
around the time he was working on his dream poems. Early chivalric
ballads such as “Sir Raymond of the Castle,” “Lewin and Gynneth. A
Tale,” both from Robinson’s 1791 Poems, and “Donald and Mary,”
from her 1794 Poems, are clearly influenced by Percy’s Reliques. These
poems are conventional in form and regular in syllabic count, generally
falling into foot-verse. The influence of the gothic ballad is even more
apparent in poems Robinson composed after Lewis’s The Monk and
the “Alonzo” stanza; these include not only “The Doublet of Grey”
and many of the poems in her 1800 volume Lyrical Tales, but also
innovative poems such as “The Savage of Aveyron” and “The Lady of
the Black Tower,” both of which appeared posthumously, the former in
the 1801 Memoirs and the latter in Maria Elizabeth Robinson’s 1804
tributary collection The Wild Wreath. These poems are supernatural
tales of violence, horror, and nightmare.
The first, “The Savage of Aveyron,” can be scanned as having
an iambic foot matrix with a few substitutions. It is framed by two
intricate fifteen-line stanzas with slightly different rhyme schemes
(a4b4b4a3c4c4c4a3b4/a4d4d4b3/a3e4e4b5/a5) with twelve similarly
rhymed twelve-line stanzas within (a4b4b4a3c4c4c4a3c4/d4e4e4d5/c5).
Note that Robinson’s principle permits some variation in the rhyme
scheme, indicating that the more important constant is the number
of stresses per line. Despite the iambic tendency of the lines, which
is endemic to the English language, the regularity in line length by
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 211

beats shows that Robinson, like Coleridge, is primarily interested in


counting stresses rather than cumulative syllables in each line. In “The
Savage of Aveyron,” a traveler encounters a feral boy whose mother
had been murdered by thieves while he was only a baby.5 Its intricate
stanza patterns match its setting, the “mazy woods of Averyon,” each
stanza winding to its terminal five-beat line, thus rendering its own
dream-like quality of being lost in the woods alone. The speaker won-
ders at the end if the “wretch” may have been “fancy-fraught” in the
“Dark wilds of dreary solitude” (2: 195; 168–73). According to the
Memoirs, this poem is “the last offspring of Mrs. Robinson’s Muse,”
and it demonstrates the perfection of her metrical art (2: 191). The
strange hypnotic meter and repeated rhymes capture perfectly the hor-
ror of the boy’s solitude and how it has stunted his development. The
speaker’s refrain expresses his alternating fear of and desire for solitude
when confronted by the young boy. The ostensible subject of the poem
is the boy, but the poem shows a far deeper interest in the speaker’s
reception of the idea of the boy’s existence. Each stanza includes the
word Aveyron at the end of a line, usually the ninth, and ends with
the word alone or one that rhymes with it. But more interestingly,
the poem’s meter emphasizes the speaker’s psychological response to
seeing the boy and his contemplation of the implications of the boy’s
savagery. Ultimately the speaker projects these fears upon himself.
In the Memoirs, Robinson’s anonymous friend (Maria Elizabeth or
Pratt) comments somewhat incongruously that “the correctness of the
metre, and the plaintive harmony which pervades every stanza, clearly
evinces the mild philosophy with which a strong mind can smooth
its journey to the grave” (2: 191). This suggests to me that the friend
recognized the poem’s outstanding formal features but could not
account for them and perhaps intended to obfuscate the poem’s darker
undercurrents; the technical proficiency her mother exhibits in the
poem, therefore, becomes a testament to the poet’s ultimate rejec-
tion of what seemed to many to be the hysterical Sensibility of the
1780s and 1790s in favor of a firmer, more masculine Stoicism or,
more likely, a pious resignation to the will of Providence. The poem
itself contradicts this reading—particularly as the speaker suddenly
finds him or herself alone at the end of the poem haunted by the boy,
“Whose melancholy tale would pierce AN HEART OF STONE” (2: 195;
174). The speaker’s encounter with the unknowable other leaves him
(or her) psychologically ravaged.6 Even though this conclusion sounds
like a typical humanitarian poem of Sensibility, the cumulative effect
of the poem’s weird, incantatory stanzas creates a darker atmosphere
of alterity that resists sentimentality. The speaker and the boy achieve
212 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

no connection, each is left alone. The thrust of the poem is not toward
the social and communal, as it could easily have been, but toward a
kind of maddening solipsism.
Robinson’s other ballad poems come closer to the accentual mea-
sures Coleridge achieves in “Christabel.” This practice of counting
beats in a rhythmic matrix is more evident in “The Lady of the Black
Tower,” one of Robinson’s most compelling poems. It opens with a
disembodied voice, calling to the unnamed lady of the title, suggest-
ing perhaps an unconscious voice telling her what she already knows
deep inside her, what indeed she most fears to be true:

Watch no more the twinkling stars;


Watch no more the chalky bourne;
Lady! from the holy wars,
Never will thy love return!
Cease to watch, and cease to mourn,
Thy lover never will return! (2: 210; 1–6)

The poem goes on to depict the lady’s vision of her lover’s corpse, her
dispute with some barefoot monks, her encounter with a skeleton-
knight, her voyage to the Holy Land, culminating with her arrival at
a ghoulish banquet straight out of “Alonzo the Brave.” The stanza
enables Robinson to develop her slight but fantastic narrative with the
incantatory stanza that bit by bit, in discrete units, creates the dream-
like effect. The short stanzas enable Robinson to break the spell sud-
denly and neatly to conclude the poem when the sleeper awakes:

Just now the lady WOKE :—for she


Had slept upon the lofty tower,
And dreams of dreadful phantasie
Had fill’d the lonely moon-light hour:
Her pillow was the turret stone,
And on her breast the pale moon shone.
But now a real voice she hears:
It was her lover’s voice;—for he,
To calm her bosom’s rending fears,
That night had cross’d the stormy sea:
“I come,” said he, “from Palestine,
To prove myself, sweet Lady, THINE.” (2: 217; 2: 109–20)

The sudden waking consciousness continues over the course of two


stanzas, where, as Jacqueline M. Labbe points out, “reality and nature
reassert themselves” (Romantic Paradox 120). By establishing the
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 213

powerful incantatory rhythms and rhyme of what we might call the


“Black Tower” stanza, Robinson is able to give the impression that
that consciousness or reality has been altered by the remnants of
the dream. Its tale bears some relation to Coleridge’s dream ballad
“Love,” which Wordsworth added to the first volume of the 1800
Lyrical Ballads in place of the delinquent “Christabel.” “Love” is
in a fairly standard ballad meter, except that Coleridge extends the
second line from the traditional three beats to four (x4a4x4a3), and in
its stanzaic uniformity it is more like “The Lady of the Black Tower”
than his own “Christabel.” For “The Lady of the Black Tower,”
Robinson devises her own four-beat sestet (ababcc4), the lines of
which generally suggest iambic tetrameters but resist foot-verse scan-
sion. If the lines were strictly composed in iambic feet, many of the
them would be catalectic or hypercatalectic—or, even more unlikely,
some lines would feature oddly placed amphibrachic substitutions. It
is more probable, therefore, that Robinson again is simply counting
beats per line.
Thus, what both Robinson and Coleridge are listening for in the
composition of their dream narratives, based on the romance/gothic
ballad, is the heavy footstep of the English line. Given her admiration
for Lyrical Ballads and its influence on her, Robinson certainly knew
“The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” which influenced such poems
as “The Lady of the Black Tower,” “Jasper,” and “The Haunted
Beach.” The fantastic meters Coleridge and Robinson composed
share a foundation in English practice and in the human psyche, and
thus their lines sound enough like the ancient folk ballads—a cultural
collective unconscious, perhaps—to encourage “willing suspension
of disbelief.”7

The Bewitching Effect of that


Absolutely Original Stanza
Wordsworth once called Coleridge “an epicure in sound” (Wordsworth,
Christopher 306). This impulse is clearly at work in Coleridge’s sin-
gling out of “The Poor Singing Dame,” “Jasper,” and “The Haunted
Beach.” “The Poor Singing Dame” in both its “metre and matter”
is similar to Wordsworth’s “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” from the
1798 Lyrical Ballads, a book that inspired Robinson’s 1800 Lyrical
Tales. Each poem tells a story of a poor old woman’s persecution by a
wealthy man; but, unlike the long-suffering Goody Blake, however,
Robinson’s “old Dame,” named Mary, is forever cheerful, singing at
her wheel and dancing at the threshold of her hovel. Wordsworth’s
214 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

antagonist is a successful farmer jealous of even the tiniest piece of


his property while Robinson’s is an arrogant aristocrat on a power
trip: where young Harry Gill begrudges Goody Blake a few sticks
of firewood from his hedge, the “Lord of the Castle” in Robinson’s
poem simply “hated that poverty should be so cheerful” (2: 34; 35).
Robinson’s poem obviates a dramatic encounter between the two by
having the Lord send Mary “all trembling, to prison away,” where
she dies “broken-hearted” (40–1). As the community mourns the
beloved old woman, the lord is driven mad by the “terrible song” of
avenging screech owls; and after wasting away in a manner like that
of Harry Gill, he, unlike Harry, dies at the end of the poem but with-
out anyone shedding a tear on his “tomb of rich marble” (54, 64).
Thus, both poems explore the guilty consciences of the villains and
the psychological manifestations of that guilt, although Robinson’s
poem denies the old woman any agency in this; Goody Blake utters a
curse that at least plants the seed of guilt in the conscience of Harry
Gill. What about the “matter” of Robinson’s poem Coleridge appre-
ciated is unclear, except that, given his friendship with Robinson at
the time, the vindictive finality of its villain’s punishment may have
afforded him some amusement, feeling as he must have done for
Robinson’s impoverished circumstances and reading the Lord of the
Castle allegorically as the Prince of Wales.
Robinson, although likely influenced by Wordsworth’s poem, is
not wholly imitative. The meter of “The Poor Singing Dame” echoes
that of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” but in such a way as to high-
light its own deviations. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth
remarks that the tale of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” is narrated “in
a more impressive metre than is usual in Ballads” (408). But this is
not a metrical contest with the ballad; it is an experiment in the nar-
rative mode, in the way he is able to tell a story to a reader or listener.
As Brennan O’Donnell explains, “An important element in the con-
ception of the poem was his choice to frame a rude ballad-narrative
in a meter that the sensitive reader would feel to be more impressive
than usual in the genre” (63). It is significant, moreover, that this
metrical experiment follows, in Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth’s “The
Female Vagrant,” written in Spenserian stanzas, making a stark con-
trast. The “impressive metre” of “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” is an
eight-line stanza of short four-beat lines, with an augmented, or femi-
nine, rhyme, indicated with an underscored space, in the first and
third lines: a_ba_bcdcd4. In addition to these features, Wordsworth
is also primarily counting stresses with an irregular number of total
syllables per line. This allows him to perform occasional exceptional
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 215

metrical feats such as employing trochaic sounds in the lines that fol-
low the extra unstressed syllables at the end of the augmented lines;
for example, “That evermore his teeth they chatter / Chatter, chat-
ter, chatter still” (3–4), or “Right glad was he when he beheld her: /
Stick after stick did Goody pull” (81–2). But mostly, what seems to
be “impressive” about the meter is the length of the stanza and the
interplay between the bisyllabic augmented rhymes and the monosyl-
labic standard rhymes. The effect is a chatty, gossipy tone essential
to the narrative irony of the poem. Robinson’s “The Poor Singing
Dame” is a more straightforward ballad-narrative but with an impres-
sive meter of its own. Obviously not being able to reap benefits simi-
lar to those that might accrue to Wordsworth as he points out his
own stanza in his own preface, Robinson nonetheless was a sensitive
enough reader to perceive his metrical experimentation and to match
it. Her stanza, like Wordsworth’s, is eight lines and similarly employs
bisyllabic augmented endings and rhymes mixed with monosyllabic
rhymes. Her stanza counters the recognizable sing-song of the first
quatrain of Wordsworth’s stanza. For example, the “Goody Blake”
stanza depends upon the regular interplay of the augmented rhyme
and the full rhyme, as in:

Young Harry was a lusty drover,


And who so stout of limb as he?
His cheeks were red as ruddy clover,
His voice was like the voice of three.
Auld Goody Blake was old and poor,
Ill fed she was, and thinly clad;
And any man who pass’d her door,
Might see how poor a hut she had. (17–24)

The recurrence of the augmented rhyme—“drover” and “clover”—


followed by the full rhyme is integral to the music of the stanza.
Robinson’s eight-line stanza employs four augmented line endings,
but the first two do not rhyme at all. And, like the “Alonzo meter,”
her lines are longer by syllabic count than Wordsworth’s but still pres-
ent four stresses per line, creating the effect of trisyllabic substitu-
tions throughout or of anapests. Many phrases sound anapestic, but
the poem cannot be scanned as anapestic tetrameter without making
several bizarre substitutions and truncations. Again, the meter makes
more sense as accentual verse. Robinson’s stanza may be represented:
x_ax_ab_cb_c4. The preceding Wordsworth passage is the third
stanza of the poem, introducing the conflict and thus beginning the
narrative after two stanzas of exposition; Robinson’s third stanza
216 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

functions similarly and also illustrates the metrical features described


previously. The two third stanzas make for useful comparison:

Now, the Lord of the Castle, a proud, surly ruler—


Oft heard the low dwelling with sweet music ring:
For the old DAME, that liv’d in the lonely hut, cheerly,
Wou’d sit at her wheel, and would merrily sing!
When with revels the Castle’s great Hall was resounding,
The old Dame was sleeping, not dreaming of fear;
And when over the mountains the huntsmen were bounding
She wou’d open her wicket, their clamours to hear. (2: 33; 17–24)

Both stanzas emphasize the advantageous position of the antagonist


in relation to the protagonist, who, in Robinson’s text, is a consid-
erably less pathetic figure. And given the emphasis in Robinson’s
poem on the old woman’s cheerfulness and her joyful singing, we
can see her attempting to achieve a more lush musicality in her meter
than the choppy, gossipy tone of Wordsworth’s; the nestling of beats
within an abundance of unstressed syllables—again with a generally
anapestic feel—establishes a melody that persists after the death of
the woman in the sixth stanza and concludes upon the repetition of
the title phrase in the final line. This last note has a resonance that
serves the poem well and makes for a very different conclusion than
Wordsworth’s poem, which encourages the recollection and repeti-
tion of the sounds of the poem along with its moral: “Now think, ye
farmers all, I pray / Of Goody Blake and Harry Gill.” Both poems
might be considered in the context of the impulse toward overall nar-
rative experimentation at the time.
Robinson’s poem, though she did reprint it in her Lyrical Tales,
appeared in an opposition newspaper and, in that particular context,
did what it needed to do—fill space while amusing the sensibilities
of a particular readership, liberal-leaning Londoners suspicious of
Prime Minister Pitt but afraid of radical insurgents. Robinson does
not need to get these readers to “think” in the way that Wordsworth
is attempting to provoke his readers into doing. But she does need
to please them with her “metre and matter.” This is the major dif-
ference between Robinson’s Lyrical Tales and Wordsworth’s Lyrical
Ballads. Because most of the poems in Lyrical Tales appeared first
in the Morning Post, Robinson composed her poems with a very
specific readership in mind. As Wordsworth’s advertisement and
his expanded and expanding preface indicate, he represented, if he
did not conceive, the collection as aiming for a wider, more specifi-
cally literary audience. Poems such as “Simon Lee,” “The Thorn,”
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 217

and “Goody Blake and Harry Gill” have more complex narrative
and rhetorical interventions than most of the poems in Robinson’s
Lyrical Tales. Robinson’s collection, however, reveals considerably
more formal variety, and her formal choices demonstrate her char-
acteristic virtuosic performativity. Where Wordsworth’s stylistic
choices conform to his interest in keeping his reader “in the company
of flesh and blood,” Robinson’s nonce forms do more than merely
“superadd the charm” of metrical language: they highlight the artis-
tic alterity of the poetic persona constructing them. In this way, we
might say Robinson’s “lyrical tales” are more superficial than most of
Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads because, as he seeks stylisti-
cally to “descend” from the heights upon which he places the “Poet,”
Robinson’s poems literally perform their artifice in the strangeness
of their forms. In other words, they are highly self-conscious. The
“lyrical” modifier in the title of Robinson’s collection is her recogni-
tion of the formal experimentation in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s
poems; in borrowing it, however, for a collection of poems with
wilder formal qualities than theirs, her title also pits her own formal
virtuosity against theirs. As always, for Robinson, style is substance.
Coleridge’s interest in Robinson’s “Jasper,” the unpublished poem
he provided for inclusion in Southey’s Annual Anthology, is primarily
stylistic. It is another supernatural metrical romance of guilt, mad-
ness, and isolation—and is undoubtedly the result of Robinson’s
reading of “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.” Writing to Southey,
Coleridge explains, “This Poem I asked for you, because I thought
the metre stimulating—& some of the Stanzas really good—The first
line of the 12th would of itself redeem a worse Poem” (Letters 1: 562).
This remark suggests that Robinson shared the poem with Coleridge
during one of his social calls, perhaps recited it; Coleridge “asked”
for it of Robinson with the express purpose of giving it to Southey.
The line Coleridge admires is “Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky!”
(2: 47; 56); it is reminiscent of the imagery of Coleridge’s “Ancyent
Marinere,” which no doubt influenced the meter of Robinson’s poem
as well. In this particular line, the accentual nature of the prosody
is striking, the four stresses falling on the first, second, fourth, and
eighth syllables, and again suggesting a connection between the two
poets’ approaches to meter and form. The “Jasper” stanza itself is a
five-line variation of the ballad stanza but with some rather unique
innovations, including internal rhyme within lines, indicated by
brackets: x4a_ 3 [bb] 4 [cc] 4a_ 3. Like the ballad stanza, the first line
does not rhyme, but where in the ballad stanza, the unrhymed third
line matches the first, Robinson’s third line as well as her fourth
218 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

employ internal rhymes, similar to some of the stanzas in “The Rime


of the Ancyent Marinere.” Meanwhile, the shorter second and fifth
lines envelop these pairs of internally rhyming lines with augmented
rhymes. This is all at work in the twelfth stanza, which is the one
Coleridge singled out for praise:

Pale Moon! thou Spectre of the Sky!


I see thy white shroud waving:
And now, behold thy bosom cold—
Oh! Memory sad! it made me mad!
Then wherefore mock my raving? (2: 47; 56–60)

Most of the poem is the maniacal Jasper’s frenzied apostrophe to


the various elements of nature that he sees as mocking his guilt and
sorrow over the death of his beloved Mary (no relation to “The Poor
Singing Dame”). Despite the madness of the speaker, the poem
maintains its regularity, creating a fixed sense of confinement that
perhaps makes Jasper’s raving seem all the more frustrated until his
final suicidal plunge into a nearby river. Although there is metrical
method to her portrayal of Jasper’s madness, Robinson thus finally
makes Jasper a male Ophelia.
Because of Robinson’s innovative use of meter in the service of her
narrative, even without Coleridge’s pleading on her behalf, Southey
likely would have found a place for Robinson’s work among the other
narrative poems in the second volume of the Annual Anthology,
including his own “St. Juan Gualberto” and “The Battle of Blenheim.”
Southey got the idea for his anthology from William Taylor, who told
him about similar “Almanacks” published recently in Germany and
edited by the likes of Schiller and Bürger. As we saw in chapter four,
Southey saw the anthology as a way of preserving poems of his own
that he considered “too good to perish with the newspapers in which
they are printed” (Robberds 1: 239). In collecting and publishing
others’ poems alongside his own, Southey depended upon the repu-
tations of his contributors to promote sales and to promote his own
work. In addition to Robinson, Southey enlisted Coleridge, Amelia
Opie, Charles Lloyd, and Joseph Cottle, among those whose names
would help sell the book. Southey put his name to only a couple of the
poems; the other contributions were anonymous or pseudonymous.
But Robinson was the most illustrious writer of the group, and her
fame would have been a selling point for Southey as he determined
which authors to include.
Coleridge likewise was looking out for Robinson’s preservation
in the Annual Anthology. He felt that “The Haunted Beach” was
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 219

similarly “too good to perish” after reading it in the Morning Post


for 26 February 1800. Coleridge informs Southey, “I was so struck
with it that I sent to her to desire that [it] might be preserved in the
Anthology.” He adds, “She was extremely flattered by the Idea of it’s
[sic] being there, as she idolizes you & your Doings. So if it be not too
late, I pray you, let it be in”; although “it falls off sadly to the last,”
Coleridge notes to Southey that “the Images are new & very dis-
tinct” (Letters 1: 576). The seaside setting and supernatural elements
in “The Haunted Beach,” combined with its violent imagery, bear
some similarity to the 1798 “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” as
well as the poem’s themes of crime, guilt, and punishment. The poem
tells of a fisherman haunted by “a band of Spectres,” the drowned
shipmates of a shipwrecked man whom he has murdered.8 In this
passage, Robinson describes how the sailor saves himself by attaching
himself to the mast of the ship only to meet his end by human hands
when he reaches the shore:

The SPECTRE band, his MESSMATES bold,


Sunk in the yawning ocean,
While to the mast, he lash’d him fast,
And brav’d the storm’s commotion!
The winter MOON upon the sand
A silv’ry carpet made,
And mark’d the SAILOR reach the land—
And mark’d his MURD’RER wash his hand
Where the green billows play’d! (2: 45; 46–54)

Coleridge finds that the poem “wants Tale,” but the poem does not
tell a story so much as it captures the guilty man’s state of mind.
In the stanza above, Coleridge particularly liked the phrase “silv’ry
carpet,” as he tells Southey; this image points to the poem’s chrono-
logical and narrative uncertainty as the effect of the moonlight on
the sand illuminates both the sailor’s salvation and his doom—but
with an emphasis on the fisherman’s guilt as he, like Pilate or Lady
Macbeth, attempts to wash away his crime. It is only in the expanded
version of the poem with an additional expository stanza, from Lyrical
Tales, do we learn that the “Shipwreck’d Mariner” has himself stolen
a “packet rich of Spanish gold” from the ship before it sunk, thus
providing the fisherman’s motive for killing him (2: 463). Robinson
may have added this stanza on Coleridge’s advice, or Stuart may have
dropped the stanza for space concerns. In its first publication, how-
ever, the absence of the additional stanzas gives the original version
the same compelling ambiguity that underlies Coleridge’s “Ancyent
Marinere.” Clearly the two poems are related, although Curran has
220 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

noted that the “eerily haunting effects created by a combination of


rhyme, meter, and repetition” present in Robinson’s text surpass “the
capacity of Coleridge’s ballad meter, however brilliantly employed, to
assume complementary meaning” (“Lyrical Tales” 27–8). In other
words, according to Curran, Robinson’s “meter” matches its “mat-
ter” better than Coleridge’s does.
For “The Haunted Beach,” Robinson has devised a nine-line lyri-
cal stanza as difficult to rhyme as the Spenserian stanza, but with
shorter, and more incantatory, alternating lines of four and three
stresses, with an augmented rhyme in the second and fourth lines:
x4a_ 3 [bb] 4a_ 3c4d3c4c4d3. The augmented rhyme is particularly signifi-
cant because Coleridge found it to be an essential feature of the stanza.
Just as he praises Robinson’s ear, he also complains that William Taylor,
who translated Bürger’s “Lenore,” has written to him asserting “that
Double Rhymes in our Langauge have always a ludicrous association –
Mercy on the Man! Where are his Ears & Feelings?” (Letters 1: 576).
The association Coleridge makes between Robinson’s ear and Taylor’s
is revealing; Robinson’s stanza, for Coleridge, clearly demonstrates the
effectiveness of augmented, or “double,” rhymes for creating a creepy
rather than comic atmosphere. The metrics of each line is indispens-
able in creating the shape of the stanza. Again, following the “Alonzo”
meter, these lines feature a heavily accentual stress to emphasize the
qualities of the haunted consciousness. In the refrain, or burden, which
appears with some variation at the end of each stanza but the final one,
“Where the green billows play’d,” for example, we hear three heavily
accented syllables; and although the six total syllables might suggest
foot verse, we would have to scan Robinson as implausibly substituting
a pyrrhic foot and a spondee for the first two feet (and an anapestic,
or trisyllabic, substitution would not balance out with the rest of the
feet because there is not metrical unit of one syllable). Robinson, like
Coleridge or Lewis, is simply counting stressed beats instead of syl-
lables. What Coleridge would have appreciated most about the meter
is the intricacy of its rhyme in each stanza, especially internally in the
third line, and the alternating shortness of the meter, which keeps the
corresponding sounds closer together for musical effect. The rhyme
is unique in a stanza of this length because there are only four end-
rhymes, and especially because the first line does not rhyme with the
rest of the stanza. Curran best describes the effect of the stanza when
he writes, “The stanzaic form is, to put it simply, haunted – forced,
like the tide that dominates the poem and ‘Re-echo[s] on the chalky
shore’ (8)[,] to turn back on itself, unable to break free of a predeter-
mined mechanism of control” (“New Lyric” 18). This is the effect that
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 221

Coleridge would have appreciated in the poem—Robinson’s nonce


stanza is like the tide acting upon the beach, itself a liminal space, and
as such performs the subject of the poem.
“The Haunted Beach” is surely one of Robinson’s greatest techni-
cal achievements because its innovative form suits the strangeness of
the poem’s interests. Robinson here has moved beyond the romance
(gothic) ballad toward something more like Poe’s “Ulalume.” She
is perfecting a lyric of the subconscious that Coleridge, having
already composed “Kubla Khan,” surely would have recognized as
coming from similarly dark and unexplored recesses—the “caverns
measureless to man.” In recognizing something strange and new in
Robinson’s poem, Coleridge clearly admires the way that her mas-
tery of poetic form enables that “willing suspension of disbelief” that
he believed necessary for appreciating surreal or supernatural poetry.
His complaint that the poem “wants Tale” may have been a rhetori-
cal ploy to obviate criticism from the narrative-minded Southey. As
Tim Fulford puts it, “In appreciating Robinson’s music Coleridge
was paying tribute to an ability which he understood to be more than
merely technical” (“Abyssinian Maid” 18). But as with his remarks on
the pleasure he took in reading Robinson’s poetry, Coleridge did find
it difficult to define exactly what that ability was and how it achieved
its impact.
Like Coleridge, Wordsworth, too, recognized an exciting innova-
tion in Robinson’s poem “The Haunted Beach” and employed her
nonce stanza for his poem “The Solitude of Binnorie,” published in
the Morning Post on 14 October 1800. Coleridge sent Wordsworth’s
poem to Stuart with the following headnote, including a sop to
Southey:

It would be unpardonable in the author of the following lines, if he


omitted to acknowledge that the metre (with exception of the bur-
then) is borrowed from “The Haunted Beach of Mrs. ROBINSON ;” a
most exquisite Poem, first given to the public, if I recollect aright, in
your paper, and since then re-published in the second volume of Mr.
SOUTHEY’S Annual Anthology. This acknowledgment will not appear
superfluous to those who have felt the bewitching effect of that abso-
lutely original stanza in the original Poem, and who call to mind that
the invention of a metre has so widely diffused the name of Sappho,
and almost constitutes the present celebrity of Alcæus. (14 October
1800)

These remarks are significant for several reasons, not the least of which
is that they presume on the part of the paper’s readers a familiarity
222 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

with prosody and poetic form. Coleridge is quick to point out that
Wordsworth’s poem borrows Robinson’s “Haunted Beach” stanza
“with the exception of the burthen,” or refrain; obviously, the line
that ends each of Wordsworth’s stanzas is “The Solitude of Binnorie,”
not “Where the green billows play’d.” But this is not what Coleridge
means to point out: instead, he is anticipating a reader’s recognition
that the accents in each of the two poems’ refrains occur in different
syllabic positions. In every other respect, Wordsworth has matched
Robinson syllable for syllable, rhyme for rhyme. Coleridge also means
to remind readers of “the bewitching effect of that absolutely origi-
nal stanza in the original Poem,” again testifying to the ineffable
pleasure Robinson’s formal ebullience and innovation affords. And,
most important, Coleridge attributes Robinson with “the invention
of a meter,” the establishment of a nonce form that promises fame to
its creator in subsequent performances of that form by other poets:
Wordsworth has demonstrated his poetical skill by attending to the
rigors of Robinson’s original form. Coleridge’s subsequent point is
that Robinson, “the English Sappho,” has created a form that may
become, like the original Sappho’s, eponymous.
Coleridge’s reference to Sappho and Alcæus has resulted in some
confusion. Because Coleridge did give one of Wordsworth’s poems
the title “Alcæus to Sappho,” some readers have taken his reference to
Sappho and Alcæus as another sign of his erotic interest in Robinson.
According to legend, Sappho and Alcæus were lovers; at the very least
they were contemporaries living on the isle of Lesbos and suppos-
edly exchanged poems with each other. Coleridge did write “The
Apotheosis; or The Snow-Drop,” a poetic tribute to Robinson, almost
three years earlier; but he had yet to write “A Stranger Minstrel,”
a response to Robinson’s “Ode, Inscribed to the Infant Son of S.
T. Coleridge, Esq.,” which appeared three days after Wordsworth’s
“Solitude of Binnorie” and Coleridge’s headnote. It is almost a coin-
cidence that he mentions Sappho and Alcæus here, because he is abso-
lutely not referring to Robinson and himself as analogous figures.
Certainly, Coleridge could not mention Sappho without intending
an allusion to Robinson’s sobriquet, but he is literally referring to
the eponymous forms associated with the two Greek poets, noting
that Alcæus’s poetry is not as widely read as Sappho’s and so he is
known more for his quatrain than for any of his poems. He does
mean to pay tribute to Robinson’s invention by reminding readers
of the eponymous Greek stanzas attributed to those two poets: the
quatrain known as Alcaics, most famously employed by Tennyson in
his poem “Milton”; and the quatrain known as Sapphics, notoriously
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 223

attempted by Southey in his poem “The Widow,” which, incidentally,


the Anti-Jacobin mercilessly parodied and critiqued. Coleridge could
not possibly be referring to himself (or to Wordsworth) as Alcæus,
because the “Alcæus to Sappho” poem would not appear in print for
more than a month, as I discuss in the following. The strongest point
of connection between the two is poetic, not erotic: Coleridge is pro-
moting Robinson for the invention of the “Haunted Beach” stanza by
reminding readers of the Post that the original Sappho, not Robinson
but like Robinson, invented a stanza form, so his point is that the
innovation of a nonce form—“the invention of a metre”—becomes
associated with the originating poets and grants them poetic lon-
gevity and legitimacy. The gesture is one of literary sociability, even
respect for a fellow poet. Robinson would have earned the gesture,
given her active participation in the professional and textual network
around the creation and innovation of Romantic narrative form.

Extatic Measures and Della


Cruscan Ghosts
The friendship between Robinson and Coleridge lasted only a few
months and through several dinner parties. In July of 1800, Coleridge
moved with his family to Keswick and never saw Robinson in per-
son again. The poetic exchange continued, however, with her “Ode,
Inscribed to the Infant Son of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.,” his reply “A
Stranger Minstrel,” her “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Coleridge,” and
Wordsworth’s “Alcæus to Sappho,” which Coleridge sent to Stuart
presumably in tribute to her and out of concern for her health.
Wordsworth’s “Alcæus to Sappho” and Coleridge’s “A Stranger
Minstrel” are poems inflected with the imminence of Robinson’s
death. The former poem by Wordsworth appeared unsigned in the
Morning Post on 24 November, a month before her death on 26
December 1800. Wordsworth wrote the poem over a year prior to
its publication, at least as early 27 Februrary 1799, when he sent it to
Coleridge from Goslar, while they were both in Germany (Letters 1:
256). Wordsworth’s editors speculate that Coleridge gave the poem its
title and added the word Sappho to the sixteenth line, but the original
manuscript of the poem does not exist. All we know is that Wordsworth
did not “care a farthing” for the poem, as he told Coleridge, presum-
ably giving the latter license to alter it as he saw fit (Letters 1: 256). As
a tribute to Robinson, the poem would seem to emphasize the erotic
nature of their correspondence by analogizing explicitly Robinson
with Sappho and implicitly Coleridge-Wordsworth with Sappho’s
224 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

supposed lover and fellow poet and countryman, Alcæus. If so,


Robinson rather implausibly appears as a blushing maiden, which may
have afforded readers some amusement at her expense; and Alcæus, or
Coleridge-Wordsworth, appears as her narcissistic lover attempting to
coax a smile of favor, after conspicuously drawing attention to other
visible signs of her desire for him. After remarking on her obvious pas-
sion and her physical beauty, the speaker concludes:

Then grant one smile, tho’ it should mean


A thing of doubtful birth;
That I may say these eyes have seen
The fairest face on earth! (Morning Post 24 November 1800)

Curiously, the smile he wants to claim is, “A thing of doubtful birth,”


a phrase that expresses his uncertainty of his deserving it or perhaps
the dubious value of a smile extorted by mere flattery. As Ashley
Cross suggests, even though Wordsworth did not write the poem
with Robinson in mind, Coleridge’s appropriation of the poem trian-
gulates literary power and reputation among the three poets (“From
Lyrical Ballads” 587–9). Considering that Robinson was the chief
poetry contributor for the Morning Post at the time, the poem’s pub-
lication could just as easily have been the result of Stuart’s need for
poetry during Robinson’s illness, of Coleridge’s having some poems
handy, and of his concern that she would not survive this latest infir-
mity. “It grieves me to hear of poor Mrs Robinson’s illness,” he writes
to Stuart in the letter that includes “Alcæus to Sappho” (Letters 1:
629). Just prior to that he writes, “I shall fill up these Blanks with
a few Poems” for Stuart to print. Stuart was accustomed to having
two or three poems a week from Robinson, so he may have writ-
ten to Coleridge to request poems from him in her stead. “Alcæus
to Sappho” appeared on 24 November 1800, but Robinson had not
provided Stuart with any poems since “Written on Seeing a Rose Still
Blooming at a Cottage Door on Egham Hill, October 29, 1800”
appeared 4 November 1800. In this final poem for Stuart, Robinson
reflects on her mortal persistence but inevitable decline, compar-
ing the still-blooming rose with her own “ling’ring form” (2: 145;
38). On 14 November, Stuart announced to his readers that “Mrs.
ROBINSON’S health is still precarious.” Certainly, Coleridge would
have known the lore of Alcæus’s supposed passion most famously
recounted by Addison, who describes Alcæus as “passionately in
Love” with Sappho and as determined to take the famous leap: in
Spectator 233 (27 November 1711), Addison writes, “hearing that
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 225

Sappho had been there before him, and that her Body could be no
where found, he very generously lamented her fall.” Given Robinson’s
illness and Coleridge’s knowledge of it, the poem in light of this story
about Alcæus’s love for the doomed Sappho assumes the quality of an
elegy or lament.
The other poems in their exchange present the two poets on a
more equal literary footing. Her “Ode, Inscribed to the Infant Son
of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.” celebrates the birth in Keswick of Derwent
Coleridge on 14 September 1800. Presumably Robinson received the
news either through Stuart or through correspondence with Coleridge
himself. And she likely knew of the death of the Coleridges’ second
son, Berkeley, the previous year. The “Ode” confirms Robinson’s
familiarity with Coleridge’s 1798 poems “Frost at Midnight,” “The
Nightingale,” and “The Rime of Ancyent Marinere.” But it also con-
firms her familiarity with Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” for, like her trib-
ute to that poem, “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Coleridge,” it mimics
the formal irregularity of “Kubla Khan,” recalling stylistically the
baroque meters of her Laura Maria odes. The “Ode” paints the Lake
District, to which Coleridge has removed, as a fantastic imaginative
space like that demarcated by Kubla Khan:

Ye CATAR ACTS ! on whose headlong tide


The midnight whirlwinds howling ride;—
Ye silent L AKES ! that trembling hail
The cold breath of the morning gale;
And on your lucid mirrors wide display,
In colours bright, in dewy lustre gay,
Fantastic woodlands, while the dappled dawn
Scatters its pearl-drops on the sunny lawn;
And thou, meek Orb, that lift’st thy silver bow
O’er frozen vallies, and o’er hills of snow;—
Ye all shall lend your wonders—all combine
To greet the Babe, with energies divine!
While his rapt soul, SPIRIT OF LIGHT! to THEE
Shall raise the magic song of wood-wild harmony! (2: 136; 25–38)

As a tribute to Coleridge as a poet and as a father, Robinson thus cel-


ebrates the generative faculties manifest in “Kubla Khan.” The poem
develops the poetic conceit of Derwent as the son of poetic genius,
addressed throughout as the “Spirit of Light,” while literally calling
on the sun rising and so also alluding to Apollo, the god of poetry.
Even here Robinson attends to formal considerations as the invoca-
tion calls upon the fixing and fitting of metrical variations: “To thee
226 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

I sing! Spirit of Light! to thee / Attune the varying strain of wood-


wild harmony” (2: 135; 5–6). The phrase “wood-wild harmony” is
a refrain throughout and points to the repurposing of Robinson’s
odic practices for the wild expanse of this particular setting, as well
as for the rustic, woodland setting of her own place of composition
Windsor Forest:

SWEET BOY! accept a STR ANGER’S song,


Who joys to sing of thee,
Alone her forest haunts among,
The haunts of wood-wild harmony!
A stranger’s song, by falsehood undefil’d,
Hymns thee, O! INSPIR ATION’S darling child! (2: 137; 91–6)

Again, Robinson sees Coleridgean procreation as an allegory for


poetic composition. Her own poem to Derwent is an analogue for
his father’s poetic genius as the child himself is a metonym for all
kinds of creative power. But it is also a lament for her own mortality:
She writes to Derwent, “In thee it [the song] hails the genius of thy
sire, / Her [the stranger’s] sad heart sighing o’er feeble lyre” (97–8).
Even infirm as she was at the time of composition, Robinson’s mod-
esty is a tad disingenuous, for she still has infinite confidence in the
power of her lyre. In this, one of her final odes, what formerly had
been baroque elegance becomes capacious metrical diversity in trib-
ute to a new poetic kindred spirit, Coleridge.
So, going all the way back to her “Ode to Della Crusca,” Robinson’s
poetic tributes tend metrically to accord with the style of the poet she
praises. Predominantly in rhyming couplets, Robinson’s “Ode” also
incorporates balladic quatrains (abab, as in lines 91–4 above), and
enveloping rhyming quatrains (abba; see, for example, lines 51–4,
69–72); moreover, the poem features extreme metrical diversity, with
lines ranging from four to twelve syllables and varying stress pat-
terns. With the exception of his “Ode to the Departing Year,” which
Robinson may have read in Coleridge’s 1797 volume and which fol-
lows the conventions of the eighteenth-century irregular ode, the
only poems by Coleridge that feature such metrical variation and that
Robinson could have known are “Songs of the Pixies,” from his 1796
Poems on Various Subjects, and “Kubla Khan.”
While it is possible that Coleridge shared “Christabel” with
Robinson, he certainly recited “Kubla Khan” for her or gave it to her
in manuscript. Coleridge first published “Kubla Khan: or A Vision in
a Dream” in 1816, when it appeared in a volume called Christabel;
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 227

Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep. A poem entitled “Mrs.


Robinson to the Poet Coleridge” appeared first in the fourth volume
of her Memoirs among several dozen “tributary lines” addressed to
her by several friends, including John Taylor, Samuel Jackson Pratt,
James Boaden, and Peter Pindar (John Wolcot). “Mrs. Robinson to
the Poet Coleridge” follows in this sequence Coleridge’s “A Stranger
Minstrel,” ostensibly a reply to her “Ode, Inscribed to the Infant Son
of S. T. Coleridge, Esq.” Robinson’s ode on the occasion of Derwent
Coleridge’s birth appeared in the Morning Post for 17 October 1800;
the other ode to Coleridge, “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Coleridge,”
is dated in the Memoirs also October 1800 and signed “Sappho,”
indicating Robinson’s intention to publish it in the Morning Post. We
do not know if Coleridge received a copy of Robinson’s tribute before
it appeared but, in a letter to Thomas Poole from February 1801,
Coleridge does refer to “a most affecting, heart-rending Letter” he
received from her “a few weeks before she died, to express what she
called her death bed affection & esteem for me” (Letters 2: 669).
It is possible that this letter included her poetic response to “Kubla
Khan.” Given Coleridge’s reluctance to acknowledge the existence of
the poem, his silence on receiving Robinson’s poem, while quoting
for Poole a passage from her letter, would be characteristic of him. We
do know that, once Coleridge moved from London to Keswick, he
and Robinson kept up a correspondence that included the exchange
of poems. In December of 1802, Coleridge wrote to Maria Elizabeth
Robinson expressing his irritation that she or, as he politely sug-
gests, the publisher Richard Phillips printed “A Stranger Minstrel”
in the Memoirs. Calling this poem “excessively silly,” Coleridge
reveals that the poem was intended to be part of a “private Letter” to
Maria Elizabeth’s mother and was not meant for publication (Letters
2: 904). Coleridge’s poem appears to be a response to the revised
version of her ode on Derwent’s birth, first published in the 1806
Poetical Works, for it is in the later, greatly altered text that “min-
strelsy” replaces “harmony” in the refrain, and where Robinson refers
to herself as “an untaught Minstrel” (2: 479–80).9 Obviously, it was
Maria Elizabeth who found Coleridge’s poem among her mother’s
papers and provided it to Phillips. She evidently also possessed in
manuscript Robinson’s unpublished poem to Coleridge on “Kubla
Khan” and gave that to Phillips as well. Coleridge, in his letter to
Maria Elizabeth, claims not to have seen the volumes, so we do not
know if he had read Robinson’s poem on “Kubla Khan” at the time of
writing to her; again, he does not mention it. Coleridge likely would
not have been pleased to see Robinson’s direct references to and
228 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

quoted phrases from his unpublished poem. In any event, he let the
matter drop, perhaps hoping to be free of Maria Elizabeth’s interfer-
ence with his reputation.
In “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Coleridge,” Robinson thrice refers
to Coleridge’s “sunny dome” and “caves of ice,” which appear in quo-
tation marks, and offers to “trace / Imagination’s boundless space”
with him. “To the Poet Coleridge” demonstrates her technical virtu-
osity; in it, she slyly winks at Coleridge by showing not only that she
understands the matter of his “Kubla Khan” but its meter as well. One
of her last compositions, the poem to Coleridge is remarkable for sev-
eral reasons. Coleridge was circulating “Kubla Khan” in manuscript
many years before its publication in 1816, and Robinson was one of
those who read the poem in an early form. It is difficult to imag-
ine anyone reading the poem in 1801 who would have recognized
Robinson’s cryptic references to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” The first
person after Robinson certainly to know of the existence of “Kubla
Khan” is Southey, but not until 1804 (Mays 671). Robinson’s poem
is the first published response to “Kubla Khan” and the best explica-
tion of it prior to twentieth-century criticism. Remarkably, she dem-
onstrates in it a comprehension of Coleridge’s poem lost on almost
all of its contemporary reviewers. For many readers of Christabel and
Other Poems (1816), “Kubla Khan” was merely “nonsense,” as Charles
Lamb reportedly declared to William Godwin (Reiman 890). And
none of the volume’s contemporary viewers seem to have made any
effort to understand the poem: William Hazlitt, for example, writes
in The Examiner that “Kubla Khan” “only shews that Mr. Coleridge
can write better nonsense verses than any man in England” (Reiman
531); and a reviewer for Scourge and Satirist calls the poem “a hasty
and unintelligible performance” (Reiman 868).
Robinson, however, proves in 1800 that she fully comprehends
Coleridge’s “visionary theme” on poetic imagination (2: 195; 1). She
picks up and responds to all the major images and motifs in “Kubla
Khan”: the river, the fountain, the “sunny dome,” the “Caves of Ice,”
the gardens, even the damsel and her dulcimer. She recognizes, more-
over, the poem’s implicit sexuality and its association with poetic cre-
ativity; she writes that the dulcimer at the end of the poem shall awake
the poet herself “in extatic measures! / Far, far remov’d from mortal
pleasures,” such as those suggested by lines 12–28 in “Kubla Khan”
(2: 197; 61–2). The penultimate act of poetic creation in “Kubla
Khan,” before the completion of the poem itself, is the creation of the
dome of pleasure. The action of Robinson’s poem, inspired by that act
of poetic creation, consists of touring the landscape of “Kubla Khan”
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 229

with the author himself as her guide: she cries, “SPIRIT DIVINE !
with THEE I’ll trace / Imagination’s boundless space!” (27–8). With
Coleridge, she follows the meandering sacred river (2–4); combing
the verdant hills, she spies the dome itself (9–26); beneath the sunny
dome, she explores the enchanted caves of ice (29–44); and in tribute,
she pauses to weave a crown of “wild-flow’rs” for the inspired and
inspiring poet (45–58). She awards him not a classical or Petrarchan
laurel but a specifically English accolade, the uncultivated flowers a
sign of primitive, untouched nature and the genius it inspires. Like
“Kubla Khan,” Robinson’s poem also ends with the damsel singing
and playing her dulcimer, but here she reminds Coleridge of the sub-
stance of the damsel’s song, which, in “Kubla Khan,” he claims to
have forgotten:

And now, with lofty tones inviting,


Thy NYMPH, her dulcimer swift-smiting,
Shall wake me in extatic measures,
Far, far remov’d from mortal pleasures!
In cadence rich, in cadence strong,
Proving the wond’rous witcheries of song!
I hear her voice! thy “sunny dome,”
Thy “caves of ice,” aloud repeat,
Vibrations, madd’ning sweet!
Calling the visionary wand’rer home.
She sings of THEE, O! favour’d child
Of minstrelsy, SUBLIMELY WILD !
Of thee, whose soul can feel the tone
Which gives to airy dreams a MAGIC ALL THY OWN ! (59–72)

“The nymph,” as Robinson calls her, sings of Coleridge specifi-


cally but also more generally of imagination, the universal poet who
has created both “Kubla Khan” and her poem. The last line echoes
Theseus’s speech on the poetic imagination from A Midsummer
Night’s Dream (5.1.14–7). Furthermore, the reference to Coleridge’s
“minstrelsy” strengthens the relationship between this poem and her
other ode, addressed to Derwent, in the latter poem’s sublime asso-
ciations between the poetic imagination and the geography of the
Lake District.
The conclusion emphasizes the formal link between Robinson’s
poem and “Kubla Khan.” She asserts that her own “extatic measures,”
literally “out of” the stasis of fixed form, prove “the wond’rous witcher-
ies of song!”; that is, the power of inspired, irregular metrical practice.
In this light, we can see that the most striking aspect of Robinson’s
230 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poem is its explicit and deliberate replication of various features of


the meter and structure of “Kubla Khan.” Robinson’s poem mim-
ics some of Coleridge’s metrical devices: like “Kubla Khan,” it seems
to adopt the contorted, unusual ballad form, while masquerading as
an irregular ode. But the metrical construction of Robinson’s poem,
in its overt similarity to “Kubla Khan,” suggests that there is more
method to the formal structure of “Kubla Khan” than most readers
recognize. If Coleridge is correct in his assessment of Robinson’s ear
for meter, surely the interplay of forms in “Kubla Khan” would not
escape her notice. As Coleridge’s “mingled measure” becomes “extatic
measures” in Robinson’s poem, the metrical puzzle of “Kubla Khan”
becomes decipherable. The only difficulty for Coleridge and his theo-
ries of poetry is that, as he delineates the process of poetic creation,
Robinson suggests that style and substance, meter and matter, diverge
into separate issues that do not necessarily reconcile (as Coleridge
insists they should in Biographia Literaria). Because both poets were
keenly aware of the principles of versification, the metrical structure of
Robinson’s poem is similar enough to Coleridge’s to occasion a recon-
sideration of the metrical issues in “Kubla Khan.”
By not only appropriating his images, motifs, and language but also
by fitting them into a more obvious structure in order to mimic and
highlight the structure of “Kubla Khan,” Robinson suggests what critics
of the poem would fail to see for more than a century—that Coleridge’s
poem is not a fragment at all but rather a carefully constructed and com-
plete statement on the poetic imagination. Coleridge’s most significant
clue is the metrical structure of the poem. The act of poetic creation,
coinciding with the creation of “the Dome of Pleasure,” climaxes in
lines 31–36 where “the mingled Measure / From the Fountain and
the Cave” is heard; though the passive construction omits by whom it
is heard, “the mingled Measure” is surely poetic song.10 The measure
that Coleridge mingles throughout is the standard iambic pentameter
line devised by Chaucer that predominates in lines 8–30 and more
broadly in the accentual folk/ballad/hymnal meters native to England.
Coleridge varies line lengths and disrupts formal rhyme schemes; still,
the meters and forms remain sufficiently intact to be recognized by the
metrically astute Robinson but have very little to do with the poem’s
subdivisions of three sections (1–11, 12–36, 37–54), which is how it
appears in most reprints. Robinson crafted her poem along the lines of
what Coleridge’s text suggests, metrically speaking.
“Kubla Khan” is divided into three stanzas that parody the staples
of English versification; and the metrical form subverts connotative
meaning, rather than being related to it. The poem’s prosody calls
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 231

into question the overdeterminacy of meter and rhyme, what Wesling


calls “the scandal of form,” about which Wordsworth and Coleridge
are both so defensive (63). In a sense, there is a metrical story being
told in “Kubla Khan” that can be read without any regard to seman-
tics. And Robinson’s poem suggests that she comprehends not only
the verbal texture of the poem but its metrical story as well. She reads
the poem completely by reading what McFarland refers to as a poem’s
“substantia,” a term that includes all of the considerations of for-
malist theory: words and their meanings but also stanza, meter, and
rhyme (273).
“Kubla Khan” opens with a five-line variation on hymnal measure.
Coleridge follows with two regular iambic tetrameter lines to signal
a gradual shift from hymnal measure in lines 1–5 to the more aca-
demic heroic quatrain, lines 8–11, which closes the first recognizable
unit of the poem. For the next nineteen lines, Coleridge faithfully
adheres to an iambic pentameter matrix; still, he continues to mingle
the measure, as the rhyme scheme signals. By line 12, the opening of
the second section, Coleridge is self-consciously working in iambic
pentameter, so he nods at his predecessor in seven lines that resemble
the Chaucerian stanza. These seven lines are followed by a quatrain
consisting of two heroic couplets (19–22). But Coleridge’s most
impressive feat of metrical gymnastics comes in lines 23–36, fourteen
lines that form a highly irregular English sonnet. Though he corrupts
the rhyme, Coleridge still manages the requisite seven rhymes. And
he signals the turn between the octave and the sestet with not only
an end-stopped line—“Ancestral Voices prophesying War”—but with
a change in meter as well: the first four lines of the sestet recall long
hymnal measure. Of course, Coleridge closes the “sonnet” with the
traditional iambic pentameter couplet, thus providing the punchline
to his metrical joke and punctuating the second stanza. The third
stanza, describing the vision and the poet’s incantation, is a return
to the folk meters that open the poem, though with even more mis-
chievous technical variations to complete the meter. So, by the end
of “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge has essentially told the story of English
poetic practice from the native ballad forms to Chaucerian foot verse
to Renaissance sonneteering to eighteenth-century couplets and end-
ing finally in a return to the ballad form in the Romantic period. As
we shall see, Coleridge’s review of English poetry is a peculiar feature
of the kind of poem that “Kubla Khan” is, particularly as it partakes
in an eighteenth-century tradition of lyrical irregularity.
Robinson was keenly aware of this metrical play and was thus able
to read “Kubla Khan” on two levels: as a poem about the imagination,
232 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

and as a poem about the arbitrary nature of poetic form and its inher-
ent pleasures in and of itself. She was confident enough to avoid imi-
tating Coleridge’s metrics and to invent her own, while suggesting
that at least one reader recognizes the surprising formality of “Kubla
Khan.” Robinson’s poetic reading divides Coleridge’s poem into the-
matic or semantic sections. This happens in her poem with the con-
struction of five distinct but highly irregular stanzas, which act more
as paragraphs than strophes and demonstrate her comprehension of
the verbal texture of “Kubla Khan.” Within the stanzas themselves,
Robinson toys with form much in the same way Coleridge does, but
far less obliquely in order to expose the metrical game Coleridge is
playing and thereby to play along with him. As she does while quot-
ing and paraphrasing its language, Robinson also demonstrates her
comprehension of “Kubla Khan” by echoing its prosody, picking up
on the most obvious features of the poem and exaggerating them.
So, when inspiration wakes in her “extatic measures,” she is not only
referring to the rapturous pleasure of reading Coleridge’s “mingled
measure” but also—playing on the older sense of the word “ecstatic,”
as in “being outside the body”—she is extending Coleridge’s metri-
cal clue by pointing out that both his poem and hers defy stanzaic
classification even as they suggest it. Robinson’s “mingled measure,”
therefore, is not only her recognition of Coleridge’s, but also the
amalgamation of her meter and his in her own “extatic measures.”
Like “Kubla Khan,” Robinson’s poem opens in a folk meter, and
thus she makes her first nod to Coleridge’s metrical scheme. Lines
1 through 8 are actually two stanzas of long hymnal measure. The
poem opens with Robinson offering to wander with Coleridge, but
she makes it clear that, while his poem initially meanders to achieve
its metrical effect, she is off to a running start. The words connote a
tribute, but the meter also clearly announces a contest. Her metrical
pyrotechnics continue throughout. The second stanza of the poem
appears to consist mostly of iambic tetrameter couplets framed by long
hymnal measure stanzas; but after reading “Kubla Khan,” Robinson
clearly intends to mingle the measure of her poem to greater effect.
Line 16 draws closer attention to the metrical scheme of the stanza
and to itself, because it is the stanza’s only pentameter line. Because of
its length and its metrical variation, this line indicates that Robinson
is doing something in the stanza: since it conveniently consists of 18
lines without the first long hymnal measure stanza, the end-stopped
fourth line suggests that it also contains a perverted English sonnet,
with the required seven rhymes but in tetrameter. Line 16, there-
fore, must be an ironic comment on the form the sonnet takes. The
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 233

prominent couplets disguise its form, and it ends in long hymnal mea-
sure, mocking the rhyme scheme that traditionally opens an English
sonnet.
Robinson continues the extrapolation of forms in the third stanza
but complicates it with a bewildering rhyme scheme and with seam-
lessly interfused forms. The second stanza ends with the long hymnal
measure, slightly varied, that has become a refrain for the end of each
stanza. The two fourteen-line stanzas that close the poem are again
perverted English sonnets that highlight Robinson’s recognition of
the sonnet Coleridge hides at the center of “Kubla Khan.” The rhyme
scheme of the first closely resembles that of the sonnet in “Kubla
Khan,” though Robinson, never wholly imitative, varies it just enough
to make the similarity striking (45–58). Like Coleridge, she contains
the first three rhymes within six lines, thus defying the heroic qua-
train structure usual for an English sonnet, which this most certainly
corrupts as it has seven rhymes. And, like Coleridge, Robinson post-
pones the “b” rhyme until the sixth line; but, where Coleridge com-
pletes the rhyme after three lines, Robinson prolongs completion for
four. Even though her lines are shorter by a foot, Robinson’s exten-
sion of the rhyme creates a more varied aural effect by prohibiting
more than two couplets in the octave, where Coleridge has three. In
the sestet, Coleridge falls into the recognizable quatrain-followed-by-
couplet pattern, though now his lines are also tetrameters. Robinson
inverts this pattern to allow for the long hymnal measure refrain,
which rhymes like a quatrain and here completes the sonnet. The son-
net (59–72) that closes Robinson’s poem begins with a string of three
couplets that end in an iambic pentameter at line 64, where Robinson
substitutes a trochee for the initial foot. Immediately following the
couplets, an envelope stanza dissolves the division between the octave
and the sestet not by enjambing the eighth and ninth lines of the son-
net, as in the Miltonic sonnet, but by making the rhyme of the tenth
line (68) dependent upon the end of the seventh (65). Ending with a
pair of couplets, Robinson prolongs the ending of the poem by two
feet with the slow length of an Alexandrine, a meter that does not
appear at all in “Kubla Khan,” providing closure to both her poem
and Coleridge’s. Robinson’s poem contains at least as much metrical
variety as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” though many of her metrical
choices are notably different from his. Still, she shows that she can
employ similar techniques.
Robinson easily could have imitated “Kubla Khan,” but she under-
stood the substance and style of the poem well enough to answer its
imaginative challenge. In effect, Robinson’s poem suggests a metrical
234 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

deconstruction of Coleridge’s poem, The echoes of the semirefrain


reverberating at the end of the first four stanzas show that she is inter-
ested in creating her own structure and sense of completion rather
than giving a false impression of fragmentariness and improvisation.
She writes to Coleridge,

With THEE I’ll trace the circling bounds


Of thy NEW PAR ADISE, extended;
And listen to the varying sounds
Of winds, and foamy torrents blended!
Now by the source, which lab’ring heaves
The mystic fountain, bubbling, panting,
While gossamer its net-work weaves,
Adown the blue lawn, slanting!
I’ll mark thy “sunny dome,” and view
Thy “caves of ice,” thy fields of dew! (2: 195–6; 5–14)

Coleridge has opened a “new Paradise” for eager poets such as


Robinson to explore on their own. Coleridge’s most famous dream-
poem, “Kubla Khan,” is anything but homogeneous in its metri-
cal structure, employing a multitude of metrical allusions from folk
meters to the sonnet and defying any single formal matrix. As John
Beer says of the poem, “Kubla Khan is a poem about poetry – in some
respects even a poem about itself” (118). This is true not only because
of its analog of poetic creation, but also because the multitude of
effects Coleridge employs in the poem consistently draw attention to
themselves as metrical pyrotechnics. A metrically astute reader such
as Robinson recognized the stitch-work in the fabric responsible for
its rich texture. In “To the Poet Coleridge,” she matches many of the
metrically acrobatic moves Coleridge makes and adds a few of her
own. In so doing, Robinson proves that she recognizes his innovative
blending of poetic forms and praises him for it. Her ode to Coleridge
is not a dream but a waking offer to share with him the poet’s vision
as his peer. Her meter highlights his and thus gives shape to a form
that seemed previously undefined, almost as if her poem is the record
of his dream. She shows that she understands the metrical structure
of “Kubla Khan” by mimicking it in her poem, while adding her
own unique flourishes. But she does not attempt to match move-
for-move the metrical complexity of “Kubla Khan” that gives it the
haze of unconscious spontaneity. Hers is deliberately a waking voice,
and she formalizes his unconscious experience: his so-called fragment
becomes her ode. The dream is disturbed, and the poet wakes in
“extatic measures” but, like him, loses the vision.11
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 235

Robinson’s poetic reading of “Kubla Khan” fixes Coleridge’s


“extatic” poem in form. This is what she does best—this formal per-
formativity. If her poetic performances are theatrical, then they are
not so much performances of characters as they are the staging, dress-
ing, and blocking of words and ideas as fixed forms prominently dis-
played. In this way, her poem to Coleridge exposes a poetical secret
to readers, a secret Coleridge himself would keep from them for the
next sixteen years. When he finally published the poem, he was deter-
mined either to mystify it or to apologize for it with the subterfuge
and of his red herring of a preface, “Of the Fragment of Kubla Khan,”
which famously complicates the reading of the poem. In it, Coleridge
seems to advise the reader not to take the poem seriously, or possibly,
more obliquely, to make a claim for its value by liberating the text
from a fixed, determinate intention. Coleridge, writing about himself
in the third person, explicitly instructs the reader to view the poem
as a “psychological curiosity,” instead of as a literary text with “sup-
posed poetic merits.” As Kathleen M. Wheeler points out, the reader
would be unlikely to think of the poem “as any more a fragment than
any other poem” without Coleridge’s calling it such (20). But why
was Coleridge so defensive of, even embarrassed by, “Kubla Khan”?
The answer lies in the similarity of Robinson’s praise of Coleridge’s
poem and her poetic adulation of Della Crusca almost a decade ear-
lier. At the end of Robinson’s life, Coleridge became for her a new
Della Crusca, the poet who initially represented her poetic engender-
ing. While it is commonplace today to read the composition of “Kubla
Khan” as a watershed moment in literary Romanticism, Robinson’s
response to Coleridge’s seemingly iconoclastic poem reveals that, for-
mally at least, “Kubla Khan” is fundamentally, even essentially, Della
Cruscan. Could it be that, after Gifford’s Baviad, which remained
in circulation for years, the rapid decline in the public’s appreciation
for anything resembling the poetry of Della Crusca explains why
Coleridge withheld the poem from publication for nearly twenty
years? Is this why he presented it finally as a “psychological curiosity”
instead of a literary text replete with any “supposed poetic merits”?
Coleridge and Robinson obviously enjoyed rekindling the poetic flir-
tations of Della Crusca and Anna Matilda; after her death, however,
as we have seen, Coleridge was not so keen on preserving that flirta-
tion for posterity. “Kubla Khan” evidently was one of these poems.
As Tim Fulford puts it, Coleridge “admired her for exactly that for
which he praised the Abyssinian maid—her music” (“Mary Robinson
and the Abyssinian Maid” 18). Perhaps this is why he shared the
poem with her, to flatter her and to flirt with her by calling her his
236 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

muse. Eventually Coleridge enjoyed performing the poem for other


poets whom he felt might appreciate its eccentricities, chanting it to
emphasize the musicality of its metrical effects. Charles Lamb wrote
to Wordsworth in April of 1816, the month before it appeared in print,
that Coleridge performed the poem “so enchantingly that it irradi-
ates and brings heaven and Elysian bowers into my parlour while he
sings or says it” (3: 215). And obviously Byron heard it too. As Leigh
Hunt later recalled, “He recited his ‘Kubla Khan,’ one morning, to
Lord Byron, in his Lordship’s house in Piccadilly, when I happened to
be in another room. I remember the other’s coming away from him,
highly struck with his poem, and saying how wonderfully he talked”
(Lord Byron 2: 53). But this is many years later. It is not clear whether
Robinson read the poem in manuscript or heard Coleridge recite it
for her. If the date on the poem in the 1801 Memoirs is accurate, he
must have mailed her a copy of the poem after bidding her farewell in
London, which would explain the accuracy of her quotations.
But the poem is also doubly attributed in the Memoirs. The title
there is “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Coleridge,” but the poem is
signed “Sappho.” This suggests that Robinson did apply the signa-
tures to the poems she sent to Stuart for publication in the Morning
Post. For some reason, this poem did not find its way to Stuart. In
the context of the Memoirs, the signature strengthens the affiliation
between Robinson and the Greek poet and affirms Robinson’s status
as the English Sappho; but its placement among the tributary poems
to Robinson and her occasional replies also underscores Robinson’s
place among the amorous poetic correspondences initiated and
inspired by the Della Crusca network. There, “Mrs. Robinson to the
Poet Coleridge” follows Coleridge’s “A Stranger Minstrel” and fixes
Coleridge as one of many poetical admirers paying court to Robinson
and her various avatars, Laura and Sappho chief among them. These
two poems are framed by a tribute by Rev. William Tasker that praises
Robinson as “Sweet SAPPHO OF OUR ISLE” and another by John Taylor
that addresses her as “dearest L AUR A” (Memoirs 4: 140, 150). Merry,
too, is among the parade of poetic paramours; without disavow-
ing his much-maligned alter ego, the editor identifies him as “the
late Robert Merry, Esq., Member of the Academy Della Crusca at
Florence” (110). This kind of erotic subordination to Robinson and
the unsavory association of himself with Taylor, Wolcot, and Merry is
what mortified Coleridge as much as the unauthorized publication of
his poem—as his letter to Maria Elizabeth indicates.
Moreover, reading “Kubla Khan” as part of a ludic quasi-erotic
exchange with Robinson requires that we remove the film of
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 237

familiarity (to use Coleridge’s own phrase) from “Kubla Khan” and
compare it with, say, Coleridge’s “Songs of the Pixies” from his 1796
volume—a volume that the English Review found to contain much
“Della Crusca affectation” (174). As David Fairer puts it, this earlier
poem “has an ethereal erotic charge” (166). “Songs of the Pixies”
dates from 1793, and Coleridge identified it in the 1796 volume
explicitly as an “Irregular Ode.” But it also deals with poetic inspira-
tion, vividly recalling the tropes of Della Crusca’s poetry as well as
of Robinson’s: the pixies administer to a “youthful Bard, ‘unknown
to fame’ ” who is as Della Cruscan as he is Coleridgean: this young
poet “Wooes the Queen of solemn thought, / And heaves the gentle
mis’ry of a sigh / Gazing with tearful eye” (Poems 20). The pixies
anoint him with poetic inspiration, singing, “O’er his hush’d soul our
soothing witch’ries shed, / And twine our faery garlands round his
head” (Poems 21). When Robinson praises Coleridge’s “wond’rous
witcheries of song,” she credits not only “Kubla Khan” but “Songs of
the Pixies” as well. And she would have read “Kubla Khan” in light
of the earlier poem.
Robinson’s responding to “Kubla Khan” in a Della Cruscan man-
ner does not in itself make Coleridge’s poem like any of Della Crusca’s,
but we should consider that possibility, especially given Coleridge’s
complicated attitude toward his own poem. What Robinson’s poem
most strikingly reveals is that, as a poem of the 1790s, Coleridge’s
“Kubla Khan” formally most resembles an irregular ode. Indeed,
its metrical variations resemble Robinson’s baroque odes from early
in her career. Harold Bloom points out the influence of William
Collins’ 1747 “Ode on the Poetical Character” as a significant influ-
ence on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and its treatment of poetic cre-
ativity (9–10). I would add that Collins’s ode formally influenced
“Kubla Khan” as well in its extreme metrical variations and even
in its tripartite structure, although Collins’s is more conventionally
the strophe-antistrophe-epode formula of the classical ode. Collins’s
ode is definitely heterostrophic. And Joseph Warton’s 1746 “Ode to
Fancy” certainly is a significant thematic precursor to “Kubla Khan,”
though its tetrameter couplets are regular where the latter poem is
irregular. While “Kubla Khan” does not have the structural and the-
matic coherence of an ode, it does posses the musicality contempo-
rary readers would have thought of as lyrical, but without, until the
end of the poem, the traditional subjectivity of the lyric.
If we read “Kubla Khan” in the context of Coleridge and
Robinson’s mutual admiration, which is itself a playful rekindling of
Della Cruscan tropes, and as part of their poetic correspondence, we
238 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

will see the poem as essentially Della Cruscan. Indeed, the most obvi-
ous poetic precursor to Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is Della Crusca’s
Diversity, A Poem (1788), which is more contemporaneous with the
composition of “Kubla Khan” than is Coleridge’s preface to the poem.
And in his preface to that poem, Merry defends his irregular metri-
cal practices and takes issue with Mason regarding the regular ode,
as I have already noted. Merry’s poem, like Collins’s and Warton’s
odes—and like “Kubla Khan”—surveys its poetic predecessors, with
Merry placing his own Della Crusca avatar in a lineage proceeding
not from Italian poets, but from Chaucer through such English poets
as Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Collins, Akenside, up to him-
self and a few other contemporaries. “Kubla Khan” is obviously a
more oblique and more provocative, endlessly compelling poem com-
pared with Diversity, but Coleridge’s composition does owe much
of its style and substance to Della Crusca. As Jeffrey C. Robinson
suggests, Merry’s Diversity is an allegory of poetic imagination or
the “poetics of the Fancy” (119). As such, it opens with a powerful
masculine creative force surveying his domain:

’TWAS on a mountain’s airy spire,


With eye that flash’d celestial fire,
That quench’d the dawn’s expanding ray,
And pre-assumed the day,
Immortal GENIUS stood. (11)

Obviously, I mean to compare this with the opening of Coleridge’s


poem where the Khan commands the construction of his palace.
“Kubla Khan,” a poem about creation, has its opening stanza echo
not only Purchas’s account of Kubla’s command, but God’s as well
in the act of Creation from Genesis. Xanadu, the site of Kubla’s
“pleasure-dome” is clearly a version of Paradise, although Coleridge
shrewdly withholds the word Paradise until the end of the poem.
In Coleridge’s mind, like that of most poets, it is a short step from
Genesis to Milton’s Paradise Lost. Newlyn provocatively claims that
“if Kubla is God, he is also Milton” (236). Indeed, in Merry’s poem,
Milton is one of the chief reasons the personification of Genius prefers
“BRITAIN’S isle” as the “Dear proud Asylum of my favor’d race” (12).
Genius goes on to describe all of the features that combine to make
English poetry superior and thereby summons the personification of
“Extatic POETRY,” the “vivifying Maid” herself (13). She is a highly
eroticized figure, the paramour of Genius, who is her “SACRED SOUL’S
ETERNAL L ORD” and for whom she “WITH NAKED BREAST DEFIED
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 239

THE WORLD” (13–4). She sings a “mystic strain” that seduces the
very landscape itself; the allegorical figure of Art is so “transported”
by her song that he displays his power in the building of “tow’rs and
column’d domes [that] usurp the skies” (15). The rapture and ecstasy
of Poetry’s song culminates in “bursting fountains [that] toss the
spangled show’r,” at which point Della Crusca coyly remarks, “Such
was the scene when the rapt Maiden sung, / Ah, who shall tell the
music of her tongue!” (15). The poem continues primarily in trib-
ute to English literature and culture, but surely this description of
Merry’s poem is sufficient to prove my point.
No one has recognized the similarity between “Kubla Khan” and
Diversity, but Robinson’s response to Coleridge leads directly back to
it. She understood “Kubla Khan” because of her own variform sensi-
bility, evident to us in the ways that sensibility manifests itself in variety
of forms. Both writers, at around the same time—she toward the end
of her career and he at the beginning of his—came to a similar poetics
by which they use metrical effects to represent the poetic imagination
in verse, its sounds and rhythms as well as its visions. This profound
dynamic and correspondence culminates in “Mrs. Robinson to the
Poet Coleridge,” which is characteristic of certain strains in Robinson’s
poetry from the beginning of her career. Robinson’s “extatic” praise
of Coleridge echoes her “Ode to Della Crusca,” from 1791, which
celebrates the poetic achievement of Merry’s Diversity and his bold
assertion of metrical variety. She praises Della Crusca’s “ever-varying,
ever-witching song,” and her description of his poetry is remarkably
similar to her response to Coleridge’s poem: she writes, “For well thy
dulcet notes / Can wind the mazy song, / In labyrinth of wild fan-
tastic form” (1: 102; 2–9). Many of the qualities critics since Lowes
have found in “Kubla Khan” likely would have been imperceptible to
Robinson and even to Coleridge, both of whom likely saw the poem as
an irregular ode in the Della Cruscan vein. One of the things we have
to remember about so-called Della Cruscan poetry is that to many
it did seem like a sacrifice of sense to sound, but only sense if that
means the matter of neoclassical poetry. As silly as Della Crusca and
Anna Matilda’s poetic romance may have been, it established a model
for Robinson in the deployment of metrical effects to express or to
perform the passion of poetry—the kind of ludic eroticism one is hard
pressed to find in Gray, Mason, or Collins. It was all about frisson and,
for lack of a better word, pleasure—the enjoyment of fanciful poetry
and bewitching lyrical and sensual metrical effects.
What happens to “Kubla Khan” if we read it as part of Robinson
and Coleridge’s playful, quasiprivate rekindling of a Della Cruscan
240 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

poetic romance? We might recall the critic for the English Review
who described the poetry of Della Crusca and Anna Matilda as
building to a figurative “orgasm” that is “sometimes so violent
as to carry the poet far beyond the precincts of common-sense”
(Rev. of Poetry of the World 127). While the reviewer may not have
intended sexual climax, Coleridge’s simile “As if this Earth in fast
thick Pants were breathing” that precedes the forcing of his “mighty
fountain” begins to seem a lot less Freudian and more deliberately
ludic, more consciously erotic as well as more carefully crafted, as
Robinson’s reading of the poem suggests that it was.12 Perhaps this
is why Coleridge did not share “Kubla Khan” with anyone other
than Robinson for several years: although we tend to see the poem
as Coleridge intended us to do—as dropping from the heavens—to
Coleridge the poem may have seemed too much a relict. When he
had put enough distance between the poem and its Della Cruscan
associations he finally published it. It was then that he set about
mythologizing the circumstances of the poem’s composition. But
he did not need to mythologize the poem for Robinson because
she knew as well as he did the pleasure of—and the price poets pay
for—feeding on honeydew and drinking the milk of Paradise. And
while her letters show Robinson promising to quit the muse, she
keeps writing poems, or “scribbling” as she, like Merry, calls it,
until her death. At the end of her life, her praise for Coleridge is the
reiteration of her promise to Della Crusca nearly a decade earlier: as
she re-reads his verse, she will imitate him and claim for herself her
share of fame.

O, then I’ll think on THEE,


And iterate thy strain,
And chaunt thy matchless numbers o’er and o’er,
And I will court the sullen ear of night,
To bear the rapt’rous sound,
On her dark shad’wy wing,
To where encircled by the sacred NINE,
Thy LYRE awakes the never-dying song! (1: 103; 51–8)

Always competitive even as she makes obeisance, Robinson asserts this


while performing the meter of Della Crusca’s “Ode to Tranquility.”
Writing to Coleridge as Stuart’s laureate, as the English Sappho,
Robinson makes a similar gesture by proving again that she can match
the “matchless numbers” of those poets she admires and awaken her
lyre with a “never-dying song” of her own.
S t u a r t ’s L a u r e a t e s I I 241

Envoi
Robinson wanted thereby to earn the wreath of fame, but she did
not want the laurel reserved for a poetess because, as her treatment
of Sappho in Petrarchan sonnets demonstrates, it bears the taint of
the ephemeral and thus of mortality. Writing ambitious poetry in
difficult forms was always a way for Robinson to affirm her hold on
the poetic laurel and to steal for herself—not to borrow—the poetic
legitimacy that came more easily to male poets who, like Merry or
Coleridge, had certain educational and cultural advantages denied
to a woman such as herself. This is why, at the end of her life, in
her final year working for Stuart at the Morning Post, she had to
revive the Sappho avatar and to use it so doggedly in the assertion of
her cultural authority, as she does in the poem to Coleridge signed
“Sappho.” She also used the avatar to praise the Earl of Moira, who
may have assisted Robinson financially near the end of her life. On 3
July 1800, her poem “Sappho—To the Earl of Moira” appeared in the
Morning Post, just a few weeks after the Irish statesman had voted in
favor of union between Ireland and Great Britain. With this particu-
lar political and personal resonance, Robinson declares her Sappho
avatar to be “Britain’s Muse” and thus she specifically credentials her-
self to bestow upon her benefactor a share of her poetic immortality
(2: 97; 49). The composition of this poem would be the last time she
would write her ubiquitous phrase “the wreath of fame”:

The wreath the Muse presents is Virtue’s claim,


’Tis BRITAIN’S off’ring! ’tis the wreath of FAME !
The deathless wreath, which owns a pow’r divine,
And, PATRON OF THE LYRE ! that wreath is THINE !
Foster’d by THEE, who early bade it live,
The blended garland shall new beauties give;
New fragrance shed PARNASSIAN paths among,
To deck the length’ning labyrinths of song! (2: 96–97; 35–42)

She celebrates patronage because she has learned the hard way the
caprices and vicissitudes of commercial literary pursuits. Her affili-
ation with Moira cultivates a “blended garland” of patron and poet
that will enable her to produce new works of genius, marked by “new
fragrance” and “the length’ning labyrinths of song”—another echo
of her “Ode to Della Crusca,” but also a metaphor for her own lyrical
diversity, with which she has been “decked,” blessed, by the Parnassian
muses. Even here Robinson exhibits her indefatigable obsession with
poetic fame as well as the explicit association she makes between
242 Th e Poe t r y of M a r y Robi ns on

performing fame through form and actually earning it. Similarly,


when she praises Coleridge as Sappho, she confers upon herself the
authority to deck Coleridge with a laurel of her own construction:
addressing him, she promises to “weave a crown for THEE, / GENIUS
OF HEAV’N-TAUGHT POESY!” (2: 196; 51–2). The crown is of course
her poem, substantiated in its formal complexity, as it always is for
Robinson.
The tragedy and the irony of Robinson’s poetic career is that, replete
as her poetry is with assertions of her worth and the supreme value
of poetic fame, she seems to have hoped that repeating these charms
often enough in print would make them true. Although it comes
from her 1797 novel Walsingham, the inscription on the monument
above her grave stands as Robinson’s final word on the subject:

Yet, o’er this low and silent spot


Full many a bud of spring shall wave,
While she, by all, save one, forgot,
Shall snatch a wreath beyond the grave. (5: 20)13

In writing her own epitaph, Robinson finally fixed in form—in verse


and in stone—what the speaker of Gray’s Elegy could only imagine.
She certainly intended the allusion.
No t e s

Introduction: The Wreath of Fame


1. The Latin is from Horace, Odes 3.30: “I have built a lasting
monument.”
2. One might also add Helen Maria Williams, Mary Tighe, and L. E. L.
(Letitia Elizabeth Landon).
3. I quote from the back cover of Amanda Elyot’s All for Love.
4. To commemorate the bicentennial of Robinson’s death, Jacqueline M.
Labbe put together a conference that became a special issue of the
journal Women’s Writing devoted to Robinson. See Labbe’s introduc-
tion to the issue (“Mary Robinson’s Bicentennial”).
5. John Wolcot, who wrote as “Peter Pindar,” later would become one of
Robinson’s closest friends.
6. For more on the satirical and pornographic representations of
Robinson as Perdita, see Pascoe (130–62), Mellor, and Brock
(77–99); the biographies, too, address these and reprint many of the
images. I discuss some of these in chapter three. Tim Fulford’s “The
Electrifying Mary Robinson” is a particularly original and illuminat-
ing study of Robinson as a figure of consumable sexuality. See Laura
L. Runge’s and Elizabeth Fay’s studies of Robinson’s publicity in light
of contemporary views of adultery. A particularly important reading
of Robinson’s preliterary celebrity in direct relation to her poetry
(and that of Wordsworth) is Betsy Bolton’s “Romancing the Stone.”
Linda Peterson studies the difficulties of female authorship in relation
to Robinson’s attempt to “author(ize) herself in and through auto-
biography” (36). Certainly, studies of Robinson cannot escape her
celebrity, which, as Ashley Cross demonstrates, continues to inform
the reception of her later poetry and her response to younger poets
such as Wordsworth and Coleridge (“From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical
Tales”). Eleanor Ty considers Robinson’s problematic past in relation
to her later novels; see Empowering the Feminine (24–84). And Diego
Saglia looks at Robinson’s career—particularly as self-represented in
the Memoirs—in relation to discourses on luxury.
7. For more on Robinson’s life and career, including the scandal-
ous details, see the three most recent biographies, but especially
244 Notes

Davenport’s, which is the most reliable. For a shorter, more general


introduction to Robinson as a writer, I recommend Anne Janowitz’s
parallel survey of the careers of Barbauld and Robinson. Robinson’s
fiction also has received valuable critical attention from such scholars
as Brewer, Setzer, Shaffer, and Ty, among others.
8. Mole’s collection of essays, Romanticism and Celebrity Culture,
building on his work on Byron, features many useful ways of locating
the origin of celebrity culture in the Romantic period. For instance,
Jason Goldsmith explores Romantic-period celebrity culture as a col-
lective mass-media rumination on national identity.
9. For more on the strategies of Robinson’s Letter, see in particular
Ashley Cross’s “He-She Philosophers and Other Literary Bugbears”
and Jane Hodson’s “ ‘The Strongest but Most Undecorated
Language.’ ” Adriana Craciun’s “Violence Against Difference” was
the first substantial comparison of Robinson’s proto-feminism with
Wollstonecraft’s. Also, Dawn Vernooy-Epp considers Robinson’s list
in the light of anthologies, canonicity, and pedagogy.
10. My idea of networking is similar to Labbe’s discussion of formal
“communities” in the poetry of Robinson, Smith, and Barbauld; I
share with Labbe an interest in Robinson’s mutable poetic selves and
will develop throughout some of the implications of her discussion of
Robinson in her essay, but I will not relate them to “Romanticism” as
Labbe does (see “Communities”).
11. Wolfson’s article focuses on Wordsworth and Coleridge and opens
with Hazlitt’s remark, from “On the Living Poets” (1818), that
“rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular
metre was abolished along with regular government” (221). Hazlitt
is being ironic.
I should make it clear that my project here is to study the implica-
tions of Robinson’s formal choices; it is not a study of prosody. A
thorough prosodic analysis, such as Brennan O’Donnell’s expert The
Passion of Meter: A Study of Wordsworth’s Metrical Art, is beyond the
scope of this book; and I venture to suggest that Robinson’s poetry
is not quite ready for such minute analysis.
12. Wolfson’s introduction to Formal Charges is an invaluable review
of the fortunes of formalist approaches in the twentieth century
and the relevance of such approaches to British Romanticism, so I
need not rehearse them in depth here. Wolfson’s book revives for-
mal approaches but with an historical and sociopolitical awareness.
Indeed, Wolfson’s book attests to the fact that historical approaches
to literature of the period ignore formal concerns at their own peril.
13. A survey of the recovery of women writers and of the issues involved
in Romantic-period canon revision would be superfluous here: see
Paula R. Feldman’s “Endurance and Forgetting” and two more
recent discussions by Beth Lau and Stephen C. Behrendt in the
Notes 245

introductions to their respective books. Three important collections


of essays on Romantic-period women writers appeared in the sec-
ond half of the 1990s and also provide an overview: see Behrendt
and Linkin, Romanticism and Women Poets; Feldman and Kelley,
Romantic Women Writers; and Wilson and Haefner, Re-Visioning
Romanticism.

1 Bell’s Laureates I: Robinson’s Avatars


and the Della Crusca Network
1. My thinking of a network as including nonhuman actors such as
poems is generally informed by Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-
Theory, explained in his Reassembling the Social.
2. Robinson does use a conventional pseudonym for her verse satire
Modern Manners, which I will discuss in chapter two.
3. This poem is reprinted in the fourth volume of the 1801 Memoirs
with Boaden identified as the author.
4. McGann provides a reading of Greville’s poem particularly in rela-
tion to More’s Sensibility: An Epistle to the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen (1782)
(Poetics 50–4). Williams’s “To Sensibility,” from Poems (1786) also
responds to Greville’s poem.
5. As she wrote in a letter, Smith considered Robinson to be one of
several notorious “mistresses, whom I have no passion for being con-
founded with” (Letters 252).
6. These variants appear in my textual notes to the poem (2: 434).
7. For more on The Wild Wreath see Debbie Lee’s article.
8. See Memoirs (7: 281–3).
9. I quote specifically the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (14 July
1786), but Robinson and other courtesans were frequently referred
to as “Cyprians” or of the “Cyprian corps.” These are euphemisms
for whore.
10. Merry’s network in Florence and their joint publication of The
Florence Miscellany in 1785 are crucial to an understanding of the
later Della Crusca phenomenon; in the interest of space, I have had to
cut my discussion of this background. I therefore recommend W. N.
Hargreaves-Mawdsley’s comprehensive (if flawed) The English Della
Cruscans and Their Time, the only book-length study, and Roderick
Marshall’s Italy in English Literature (174–236); see also Bostetter,
Clifford, and Moloney.
11. I quote from The Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (14 April
1777): 4; see Bonnell 130.
12. The official website for the Accademia della Crusca (www.accademia-
dellacrusca.it) translates this as “brigade of coarse bran” and provides
a useful history from the 1570s to the present.
246 Notes

13. Merry, who was prone to radical sentiments, may have found mem-
bership in the academy a way to associate with Tuscans hostile to
Leopold’s autocracy (Hargreaves-Mawdsley 29). Marshall suggests
that Merry’s “Della Crusca” pseudonym was a comment on the clos-
ing of this academy and the impotence of the Accademia Fiorentina
under the direction and “thumb” of Leopold (175, 177). Moloney,
however, sees Merry’s adoption of the name as apolitical (50–1).
Zuccato’s study of Petrarch in Romantic England includes some dis-
cussion of the Della Cruscans in Florence (73–7). The Accademia
della Crusca was reestablished under Napoleon in 1811.
14. Hargreaves-Mawdsley provides an extensive summary of this poetic
exchange, although he often than not laughs at Merry and Cowley
rather than with them. Labbe’s “Anthologised Romance,” reprinted
in her book The Romantic Paradox (39–66), is a far more insight-
ful reading that focuses on the poetic eroticism of the exchange.
McGann’s Poetics of Sensibility was among the first to take the
exchange seriously, making the crucial observation that Della
Cruscan poetry is self-consciously artificial. Pascoe’s chapter on
the Della Cruscans surveys the phenomenon, from The Florence
Miscellany through Gifford’s attack on them in The Baviad, but with
a particular interest in women’s participation in the phenomenon
and in its relationship to Romanticism (Romantic 68–94). Most
recently, Claire Knowles puts the Della Cruscans in the context of
her study of gender and performativity as these issues pertain to
literature of Sensibility (17–43). In a particularly refreshing study,
Jeffrey C. Robinson considers the Della Cruscans as “poets of the
Fancy” and argues that their influence drives Robinson’s poetry
throughout her career. I heartily concur. See Unfettering Poetry
111–38.
15. Based on the errata printed 25 December in the World and on subse-
quent printings, I have changed “shew” to “strew.”
16. See Bass 270; Byrne 247–8; Davenport 156; Gristwood 236.

2 Bell’s Laureates II: . . . So


Goes the World
1. In her edition of Piozzi’s Thraliana Balderston quotes a letter by
Merry of 27 February 1788 to Mrs. Piozzi, in which he expresses
his doubt that Anna Matilda is Anna Seward and his certainty that
she is a married woman: “ ‘I rather doubt Miss Seward being Anna
Matilda, as she says in her last Ode “Love on my couch has pour’d
each sweet” Now tho’ the circumstance is very possible, yet the con-
fession is hardly probable for a Miss.’ ” (716 n. 3)
2. Werkmeister provides a fuller account of the dispute (165–8).
Notes 247

3. Again, I am indebted to Werkmeister’s scholarship; she devotes two


lengthy chapters to the two Star newspapers and attendant contro-
versy (London 219–316).
4. Werkmeister’s second book on the London newspapers, A Newspaper
History of England, 1791–1793, is an exhaustive study. It shows that
the Oracle remains generally Whiggish but wildly inconsistent in its
politics.
5. For a substantial recovery of fancy as integral to Romantic-period
poetics, see Jeffrey C. Robinson’s book.
6. The juxtaposition of Laura Maria with Sappho here is tantalizing,
for no poem with the Sappho avatar appears in surviving copies of
the Oracle until Robinson’s “Sonnet to Lesbia” on 5 October 1793.
As it turns out, Bell had indeed received a sonnet signed “Sappho,”
for Bell notes on 8 August 1789 that the manuscript has met with
an accident that requires the submission of another copy. The pref-
ace to her 1791 volume does not acknowledge “Sappho” as one of
Robinson’s pseudonyms as it does of “Laura,” “Laura Maria,” and
“Oberon,” although the “&c. &c.” suggests that she may have had
others in the lost issues of the Oracle.
7. I learned about Reynolds’ theory of “central forms” from John
Barrell’s The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt:
“The Body of the Public”; his chapter on Reynolds explores provoca-
tively the political implications of Reynolds’ theory on his efforts to
found “a republic of taste” (140).
8. Pascoe does not mention Della Crusca’s ode, which would seem to
undermine her claim that Merry’s poetry is “prosodically unexcep-
tional, composed almost exclusively in rhyming couplets of iambic
tetrameter” (80). The poems exchanged between Della Crusca and
Anna Matilda are in tetrameter couplets, but a poem such as Della
Crusca’s Diversity, for example, shows Merry writing with consider-
able metrical variation.
9. See also Curran’s chapter on the hymn and the ode in Poetic Form
and British Romanticism.
10. I will discuss Merry’s Diversity in relation to Coleridge’s “Kubla
Khan” in chapter five.
11. A footnote in Robinson’s 1806 Poetical Works identifies Cesario as
“Miss M. Vaughan, daughter of Thomas Vaughan, Esq. of Molesy
Hurst, Surry.” Thomas Vaughan (fl. 1772–1820), poet and drama-
tist associated with the Della Crusca network. In his 1793 volume,
William Kendall claims the Ignotus pseudonym as his own (17). See
“To Cesario” and “Echo to Him Who Complains” (1: 127–9).
12. Serious treatments of Merry’s politics are rare: Clifford focuses
mainly on his relationship with Hester Piozzi while calling him
“a pre-Byronic Hero.” He briefly compares Merry’s radicalism to
Shelley’s and Byron’s but generally portrays Merry as a failure.
248 Notes

Adams treats him more favorably and more comprehensively. More


recently, Mee provides an overview of Merry’s move from polite
sociability to radical politics. Wood, without using the phrase
“Della Crusca” at all, discusses Merry’s radical and satirical pam-
phlet Signor Pittachio, which portrays Pitt as a quack medicine-
show performer (82–5).
13. Maxwell was an arms dealer who intended, along with Tooke, to
provide weapons to France after the Duke of Brunswick’s intimidat-
ing manifesto warning the French people of dire consequences if the
Royal Family were harmed (Barrell, Imagining 224).
14. Clark, in his book on Gifford, wrongly presumes Bell to be the actual
author of this poem (53); Gifford pairs it with a sonnet attacking him
that did appear in the Gentleman’s Magazine (62 [August 1792]:
748–9); but the sonnet supposedly by Bell is a parody of the previ-
ous sonnet as well as of Bell’s intellectual pretentions, which Gifford
mocks throughout.
15. Robinson’s treatment of Marie Antoinette’s Revolutionary travails
as well as her brief personal acquaintance with the Queen is a sub-
ject of great interest. It features in the biographies naturally, but has
been explored in greater detail than I am able to do here by Pascoe
(Romantic Theatricality 117–29), Craciun (Fatal Women 76–109),
and Garnai (82–95). See also Binhammer and Conaster. The Memoirs
contains an account of Robinson’s encounter with Marie Antoinette
(7: 268–9).
16. Werkmeister notes that the Telegraph included Robinson in a list of
public figures who paid for newspaper puffs; the list also included the
Prince, his illegal wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Pitt (Newspaper 20).
17. Bysshe did not deny accent in English poetry, but he did not recom-
mend that stressed and unstressed syllables be configured on the clas-
sical models for long and short syllables in Greek and Latin. Bradford
shows that the popularized notion of syllabics as deriving from Bysshe
is a misreading of the complexity of his theory (53–6). Still, it is evident
to me that Robinson’s practice in her earlier irregular odes is syllabic;
her familiarity with French poetry would have justified her practice.
18. Trey Conatser considers this poem among several other contempo-
rary poems about Marie Antoinette.
19. In addition to Mitchell’s biography of Fox, I am indebted to Mitchell’s
Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782–
1794, to E. A. Smith’s Whig Principles and Party Politics, and to
David Wilkinson’s more recent The Duke of Portland: Politics and
Party in the Age of George III.
20. See Craciun (Fatal 76–109) and Garnai (90–5).
21. See Craciun (British 82); Craciun identifies the addressee of the above
letter as Jane Taylor (198n), but it must be John Taylor—especially
since, in it, Robinson calls him “Juan” (7: 305).
Notes 249

3 The English Sappho and the


Legitimate Sonnet
1. Thanks to Kristen Girten for sharing this quote with me.
2. See Peter Tomory, “The Fortunes of Sappho: 1770–1850” (121).
Tomory provides an overview of portrayals of Sappho that usefully
contextualizes Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon.
3. Donne’s homoerotic “Sappho to Philaenis” was forgotten during the
eighteenth century. Few new editions of Donne appeared in the eigh-
teenth century, none in London after 1719.
4. For more on Verri’s novel, see DeJean (169–73) and Tomory, who also
studies the accompanying illustrations by Henry Tresham. The image
on the cover of this book is from one of Tresham’s etchings.
5. George Woodcock’s monograph on Behn is called The English Sappho
from William Oldys’s remark that Behn may “justly be called the
English Sappho” (81).
6. The most sexually explicit representation in print of Robinson is
the 1784 Memoirs of Perdita. In addition to countless newspaper
columns and satirical prints, including most notably Gillray’s The
Thunderer (1782), which depicts Robinson being vaginally impaled,
Robinson as Perdita also figures in Satire on the Present Times
(1780), A Poetical Epistle from Florizel to Perdita (1781), Letters
from Perdita to a Certain Israelite (1781), The Celestial Beds (1781),
The Vis-à-Vis of Berkeley Square (1783), and The Amours of Carlo
Khan (1789).
7. Robinson’s letter appears in the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser
and in the London Chronicle for 5 August 1786 and in the Gazetteer
and New Daily Advertiser for 7 August 1786.
8. For more on the role of women poets in the eighteenth-century son-
net revival, see my “Reviving the Sonnet.” My work on the sonnet
builds on the foundation laid by Stuart Curran’s Poetic Form and
British Romanticism (29–55). Since my essay first appeared, Paula R.
Backscheider (316–75), Edoardo Zuccato, and Stephen C. Behrendt
(British Women 115–51) have significantly contributed to our under-
standing of the sonnet during this period, and particularly of the uses
women poets make of the form. Surveying women poets’ experiments
with form, Backscheider rightly centers her chapter on the sonnet
around Charlotte Smith, whom she reads in light of the eighteenth-
century tradition and not so much as a pre-Romantic. Behrendt, in
contrast, positions Smith at the head of a group of Romantic-period
women sonneteers. For specific examples of what men and women
poets did with the Romantic-period sonnet, see A Century of Sonnets,
an anthology edited by Paula Feldman and myself. For a look forward
from this point, see Joseph Phelan’s study The Nineteenth-Century
Sonnet.
250 Notes

9. R.D. Havens’s The Influence of Milton on English Poetry is still the


most thorough study of the history of the sonnet after Milton. His
bibliography of eighteenth-century sonnets is remarkably compre-
hensive and extremely useful.
10. For more on the formal history of Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets, see my
article on “Formal Paradoxy.” I also discuss Smith’s place in the
Romantic-period revival in “Reviving the Sonnet” and “To Scorn or
To Scorn Not the Sonnet.”
11. See in particular Sonnets III and VII from Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets.
12. For more on Seward’s theory of the “sonnet’s claim” and her hostil-
ity to Smith’s illegitimate sonnets see my “Reviving the Sonnet.”
13. Referring to the illegitimate sonnet, Henry Crabb Robinson wrote
that Wordsworth, who preferred the legitimate sonnet as practiced
by Milton over Shakespeare’s form, considered “it to be absolutely
a vice to have a sharp turning at the end with an epigrammatical
point” (485). For more on Wordsworth’s views of the sonnet, see
my “ ‘Still Glides the Stream’ ” and “To Scorn or To Scorn Not the
Sonnet.”
14. Addison’s remarks on Sappho appear in Spectator 223 (15 November
1711), 229 (22 November 1711), and 233 (27 November 1711). A
second edition of Fawkes’s Works of Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, Moschus,
and Musæus had been published 1789; the selections in the Complete
Edition were excerpts from this earlier publication.
15. I echo the title of Elizabeth D. Harvey’s article “Ventriloquizing
Sappho, or the Lesbian Muse,” which examines Donne’s homoerotic
“Sappho to Philaenis” in relation to Ovid’s text. This and other
essays by Glenn W. Most, Yopie Prins, and Harriette Andreadis
in Ellen Greene’s collection Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and
Transmission have informed my understanding of Sappho’s modern
reception.
16. In his study of Petrarch in Romantic England, Zuccato looks at
Robinson in her Della Cruscan context and also reads her “Petrarch
to Laura” in relation to Sappho and Phaon (73–93).
17. Robinson was not the first to adapt the heroic epistle to Petrarch’s
situation. Dobson’s Life of Petrarch inspired the publication of new
translations and great interest in the Italian poet, who became an
icon of the literature of Sensibility. In 1780, Rev. Joseph Plymley
published A Poetical Epistle from Petrarch to Laura and, in 1786,
Charles James published Petrarch to Laura, A Poetical Epistle—both
based on Dobson’s Life and modeled on the Ovidian heroic epis-
tle. Plymley’s Petrarch is scrupulously chaste, while James’s displays
more of the passionate frustration of Pope’s Eloisa. But both miss
entirely the formal cross-dressing that Ovid’s Heroides established
and that Pope and Robinson clearly understood. I have found no
heroic epistles in the eighteenth century that represent Laura writing
Notes 251

to Petrarch, which would seem to be worth attempting given Pope’s


adoption of Eloisa as his subject.
18. Philips’ translation first appeared in Addison’s discussion of Sappho
in Spectator 229 (22 November 1711). I quote from that text; see
below.
19. The full Spectator text of Philips’ translation appears below:
Blest as th’ immortal Gods is he,
The Youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears, and sees thee all the while
Softly speak, and sweetly smile.
’Twas this depriv’d my Soul of Rest,
And rais’d such Tumults in my Breast;
For while I gaz’d, in Transport tost,
My Breath was gone, my Voice was lost.
My bosom glow’d; the subtle Flame
Ran quick thro’ all my vital Frame;
O’er my dim Eyes a Darkness hung;
My Ears with hollow Murmurs rung.
In dewy Damps my Limbs were chill’d;
My Blood with gentle Horrors thrill’d;
My feeble Pulse forgot to play,
I fainted, sunk, and dy’d away. (229 [22 November 1711])
20. Christopher C. Nagle reads Sappho and Phaon differently, as less
decidedly heteronormative than I do, arguing that Robinson
“recuperates” and “celebrates” the “distinctive power” of Sappho’s
“ambiguous, sexually saturated Sensibility” (61). See 55–62.
21. Curran calls Sappho and Phaon a “sonnet sequence à clef ” (“Mary
Robinson’s” 21).

4 Stuart’s Laureates I:
Poets and Politics Perplext
1. To be fair, Taylor did not allow his politics to interfere with his
friendships, for he remained friends with John Wolcot, who, as the
satirical poet Peter Pindar, was indefatigably hostile to Pitt and to the
Tories. And no evidence suggests that Taylor was ever publicly critical
of Robinson.
2. Godwin’s political philosophy had an immediate influence on
Robinson, as William Brewer demonstrates in his article on
Robinson’s novel Hubert de Sevrac (1796).
3. As Craciun observes, both January poems are liberal antidotes to the
obsequious drivel Poet Laureate Pye was obliged to compose for every
New Year’s Day (74–7). In addition to Craciun, for other readings of
252 Notes

“St. James’s Street,” see Curran (“Mary Robinson and the New Lyric”
12–3) and Behrendt (British Women Poets 54–6). Behrendt’s com-
mentary is revised from his important earlier essay, which appeared
in his collection Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press, one of the
first studies to renew interest in Robinson’s radicalism since her recov-
ery and to place her work in context among other women poets with
radical inflections. In 1947, I should note, M. Ray Adams included
a chapter on Robinson’s career and her politics in his foundational
Studies in the Literary Backgrounds of English Radicalism.
4. Jones examines in greater detail the two poems and their contexts.
5. The poem appears as the final poem in my edition (2: 221), where I
mistakenly placed it as having first appeared in 1806. Although the
1806 text differs in only a couple of substantives from the 1797 text,
the poem belongs among the poems of December 1797 from the
Morning Post—as Craciun’s discovery rightly indicates; see her British
Women Poets and the French Revolution (79–80). In the quotation
given here, I have provided the full poem from the Morning Post.
6. Because of my focus on the newspaper poetry, extensive commen-
tary on Robinson’s Lyrical Tales is (regrettably) beyond the scope of
my study. In addition to Vargo’s, other significant studies of Lyrical
Tales include Stuart Curran’s “Mary Robinson’s Lyrical Tales in
Context,” Ashley Cross’s “From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales,”
and Labbe’s “Deflected Violence” and Romantic Paradox (103–21).
See also Betsy Bolton’s article “Romancing the Stone,” reprinted in
her Women, Nationalism, and the Romantic Stage (106–38), which
discusses a number of the poems in Lyrical Tales. Robin Miskolcze
also examines Robinson’s narrative poems about “exiles and fugi-
tives,” most of which she wrote at the end of her career.
7. See Paradise Lost: “So gloz’d the Tempter” (9.549).
8. Curran’s “Mary Robinson’s Lyrical Tales in Context” compares
her poetry with Wordsworth’s and Southey’s in greater detail than
I can do here. See also Michael Wiley’s comparison of Robinson’s
“The Deserted Cottage,” Wordsworth’s “The Ruined Cottage,” and
Southey’s “The Ruined Cottage” from English Eclogues.
9. Pascoe also identifies an “antifeminist” tone in Tabitha Bramble’s
poems, which she rightly describes as “bits of comic business meant
primarily, if not solely, to amuse” (181). Vargo’s reading of the
Tabitha Bramble poems finds more positive social messages in them
than perhaps mine does.
10. See “Lines, on Reading Mr. Pratt’s Volume ‘Gleaning through
England’ ” (2: 6–8), “Laura Maria to Peter Pindar, Esq.” (2: 8–9),
“On Seeing the Crayon Landscapes of Peter Pindar” (2: 10–1).
11. For examples of Laura Maria’s sentimental and/or melancholy
poems, see “To the Wild Brook” (2: 9–10), “Anacreontic” (13–4),
“The Nettle and the Daisy” (31–2). For her morally didactic ones,
see “The Miser” (17–8) and “The Gamester” (29–30).
Notes 253

12. In an article from 1930, Earl Leslie Griggs writes favorably of Robinson
and extensively of her and Coleridge’s work on the Morning Post,
but makes no mention of Robinson holding an editorial position.
Robert Woof describes Southey and Robinson as being “employed as
principal contributors of poetry,” making no mention of any edito-
rial work (152). Neither does Carol Landon in her well-researched
essay on Wordsworth’s “Solitude of Binnorie,” which appeared in
the Morning Post during Robinson’s tenure, with a headnote not by
Robinson but by Coleridge paying tribute to Robinson’s metrical
skill and acknowledging the influence of her poem “The Haunted
Beach” on Wordsworth’s poem. Other experts in this area (Landon,
Woof, and Werkmeister) never refer to Robinson as anything other
than a regular or contracted contributor.
13. Although the original letters are not known to exist, Setzer con-
vincingly argues that the reprinted letters appearing in the Lady’s
Magazine in 1822 are authentic (307–8).
14. See Erdman, “Lost Poem Found,” which describes the search for and
recovery of Coleridge’s first poem to Robinson; as Erdman explains,
Lucyle Werkmeister discovered the reprinting of Coleridge’s poem in
this other paper.
15. Coleridge later revised this poem as “The Destiny of Nations, A
Vision.”
16. For more on Coleridge’s first poem to Robinson, see Luther (400–3)
and Cross (“Harping” 45–8).
17. In her biography of Robinson, Paula Byrne makes the remarkable
claim that Coleridge and Robinson met as early as February 1796
(321). Adam Sisman and Pamela Clemit in letters to the TLS have
proven that this is highly unlikely; Clemit, moreover, identifies the
“C.” in Godwin’s diary entries for this time as Thomas Abthorpe
Cooper. Coleridge would not become friends with Godwin until
around the same time he becomes friendly with Robinson. Slightly
expanded versions of Sisman’s and Clemit’s corrections are available
on the Friends of Coleridge website. It is possible, of course, that
Coleridge had read Robinson’s work long before the two met in
person.
18. Although the Morning Post announced on 6 September 1797 that
Robinson had completed an epic poem, I can only assume that
Robinson’s series of “Poetical Pictures” are extracted from that
work. My textual notes to these poems show that Robinson probably
reconstituted them with additions and other revisions. No manu-
script of the original poem is known to exist. The Progress of Liberty
first appears in print in its entirety in the 1801 Memoirs and the
1806 Poetical Works. The “Poetical Pictures” series concludes on
18 May 1798. Other poems that would make up parts of “The
Progress of Liberty” appeared over the next two years: these include
“The African,” by “Mrs. Robinson,” Morning Post and Gazetteer (2
254 Notes

August 1798); “The Cell of the Atheist,” by “Laura Maria, from a


Poem in Two Books, Not Yet Published,” Morning Post and Gazetteer
(19 August 1799); “The Hermit of Mont Blanc,” by “Mrs. Robinson,”
Monthly Magazine 9 (February 1800): 53–5; “The Italian Peasantry,
From an unpublished Poem, by Mrs. Robinson,” Monthly Magazine
9 (April 1800): 260–1; and “Harvest Home,” by “Mrs. Robinson,”
Morning Post and Gazetteer (30 August 1800). This latter poem is
dated August of 1800, suggesting that Robinson continued working
on The Progress of Liberty. Still, it is impossible to know how authori-
tative the final, reconstituted poem is. Unfortunately, I do not have
space in this book to discuss this repurposing.
19. Robinson’s “Sylphid” essays are worth considering in light of her
poetic self-representations; for more on them, see Setzer’s “Mary
Robinson’s Sylphid Self.”

5 Stuart’s Laureates II:


A Woman of Undoubted Genius
1. The connection between Coleridge and Robinson has long been
established and continues to yield provocative studies. Both John
Livingston Lowes and Elisabeth Schneider mention Robinson in their
definitive studies of Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” and Coleridge’s use of
opium from 1927 and 1953, respectively. The poetic correspondence
also has figured in important early twentieth-century textual and bib-
liographical studies by Earl Leslie Griggs, David V. Erdman (“Lost
Poem Found”), Stephen M. Parrish and Erdman, Carol Landon, and
R.S. Woof. Since Curran’s “The I Altered” in 1988, the relationship
between the poets has been explored from many different perspec-
tives: in the 1990s, Martin J. Levy, Kathryn Ledbetter, Susan Luther,
Lisa Vargo, and myself took up in greater depth the significance of
Robinson’s access to Coleridge’s unpublished “Kubla Khan” and
of Coleridge’s responses to her person and her poetry. More recent
approaches by Tim Fulford and Judith Hawley have explored the
dynamics of the relationship in terms of gender, although the result
has, at times, seemed like tug of war between masculinity and femi-
ninity. It would be another ten years before the connection would be
explored again in depth: Ashley Cross’s “Coleridge and Robinson:
Harping on Lyrical Exchange” is a particularly balanced view of the
relationship as an exchange between equals whose goals “are mutu-
ally inclusive, not exclusive of one another” (41). Cross’s perspec-
tive is particularly helpful to mine because it has established a new
step beyond the contentions of gender, closely reading the poetry for
what it says about itself and recognizing the possibility that Robinson
and Coleridge were also two writers who shared many of the same
concerns and processes. Eugene Stelzig’s recent essay on their poetic
Notes 255

exchange improves upon my own previously published work. I obvi-


ously am indebted to the work of all of these scholars in what follows.
See also Debbie Lee on Robinson’s daughter’s collection The Wild
Wreath and Cross on Robinson’s poetic networking with Wordsworth
and Coleridge in relation to the “problem of literary debt” and to
Robinson’s reputation (“From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales”).
2. Susan J. Wolfson has edited an online collection of essays on the
effects of sound in literature of the period, “ ‘Soundings of Things
Done’: The Poetry and Poetics of Sound in the Romantic Ear and
Era,” for the Romantic Circles Praxis series.
3. Gamer shows, in particular, how Wordsworth’s goal was to trans-
form the 1798 Lyrical Ballads from the German and gothic into the
English and pastoral; see Romanticism and the Gothic 90–126.
4. Mary Favret discusses the phenomenon of poetry in Romantic-period
novels with attention to critical reception, including Coleridge’s
review of The Monk, and questions of generic legitimacy. Favret
briefly discusses Robinson’s novel Walsingham, which includes more
poems than any of her other novels.
5. The London papers in August and September of 1800 contain
numerous reports of the feral child, estimated to be nine years old,
found in the French forest of Aveyron, and of subsequent attempts to
domesticate him.
6. I read the speaker as male because of the repeated emphasis on his
traveling alone, but I suppose the speaker could be a woman. Curran
provides a reading of this poem in “Mary Robinson and the New
Lyric” (19–20). Miskolcze compares the poem with Robinson’s “All
Alone” from Lyrical Tales (209–11).
7. I compare the metrical practices of the two poets in greater detail in
“Coleridge, Mary Robinson, and the Prosody of Dreams.”
8. The Memoirs describe an actual incident that inspired the composi-
tion of the poem (7: 278–9).
9. For more on Coleridge’s “A Stranger Minstrel,” see Tim Fulford’s
“Mary Robinson and the Abyssinian Maid,” which appears in revised
form also in his Romanticism and Masculinity (112–24).
10. I cite Mays’s variorum text of “Kubla Khan” (2.1.676–7), from
the fair copy in Coleridge’s hand that Southey mailed, because it is
likely the closest to the version that Robinson read or that she heard
Coleridge recite.
11. As Martin Levy points out, Robinson’s Memoirs describes circum-
stances of Robinson’s composition of her poem “The Maniac” that
are remarkably similar to those Coleridge describes in his 1816
preface to “Kubla Khan” (161). According to the Memoirs, in 1791
Robinson became fascinated with a lunatic called “mad Jemmy”
while visiting Bath and she composed her poem about him under
the influence of opium. See 1: 412 and 7: 280–1. This poem has a
256 Notes

homostrophic nonce form and thus is formally different from “Kubla


Khan”; I call it the “Maniac” stanza: a4a4b5c4c4b6. For more on this
and other poems by Coleridge and Robinson that share an interest
in dreams, see my “Coleridge, Mary Robinson, and the Prosody of
Dreams.”
12. The Oxford English Dictionary does cite an instance of the word
orgasm being used to describe sexual climax and seminal ejaculation
as early as 1754.
13. It appears in Walsingham as a poem called “Penelope’s Epitaph,”
appearing on the tombstone of the narrator-protagonist’s mother’s
grave.
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I n de x

Accademia della Crusca, 39–41, Hannah; Greatheed, Bertie;


245, 246 Kendall, William; ludic
Adams, M. Ray, 64, 248, 252 poetry; Merry, Robert;
Addison, Joseph networking; pseudonymity;
cited by MR, 127, 132 Robinson, Mary, pseud-
as Isaac Bickerstaff, 19 onyms/avatars; Southey,
on Sappho, 116, 145–6, 224, Robert; Vaughan, M.
250, 251
Adney, Tom, 35 Backscheider, Paula R., 12, 13, 249
Akenside, Mark, 48, 80, 238 Balderston, Katherine C., 246
Alcæus, 221–5 ballad, 166, 193, 203–13, 214–16,
allegory, 15–16, 27, 31, 48, 53, 60, 217–18, 220–1, 226, 230–1
71, 73–4, 77, 80–1, 90, 96, Bancks, John
98–9, 101, 135, 137, 150, “A Description of London,”
158, 190, 214, 226, 238–9 162–3
“Alonzo meter,” 193, 203, 206–9, Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 1, 4, 7, 12,
215, 220 114, 200, 244
see also Lewis, M. G., “Alonzo “Ode to Spring,” 78
the Brave and Fair Imogine” on odes, 72, 75, 79
Amours of Carlo Khan, 249 thought to be Anna Matilda, 45
Andreadis, Harriette, 250 Barrell, John, 96, 108, 154, 190,
Andrews, Miles Peter, 35, 49–50 247
as Arley, 49, 50 Barthélemy, Jean-Jacques, 127,
Anna Matilda, see Cowley, Hannah 141
Anti-Jacobin, 94, 96, 155, 170, Bass, Robert D., 185, 246
193, 223 Beardsley, Monroe C., 10
Argus, 96, 109 Beaumont, William, 127
Arley, see Andrews, Miles Peter Beer, Gillian, 131
Armida, see Cowley, Hannah Beer, John, 234
Arno, see Boaden, James Behn, Aphra, 116–17, 121, 249
Austen, Jane, 139 Behrendt, Stephen C., ix–x, 13,
avatars, 13–14, 15–32, 81–6, 160, 244–5, 249, 252
115–17, 182–3, 241–2 Bell, John
see also Andrews, Miles Peter; attacked by Gifford, 36, 91,
Boaden, James; Coleridge, 94–5, 248
Samuel Taylor; Cowley, bankruptcy of, 38, 97–8
270 Index

Bell, John—Continued Bloom, Harold, 237


Bell’s Classical Arrangement of Boaden, James
Fugitive Poetry, 70 as Arno, 68, 82, 93, 113
“bookseller to the Prince of as Della Cruscan poet, 35, 245
Wales,” 36, 66 editor of Oracle, 68, 92, 149–50
The British Album, 38, 40–1, 49, friendship with MR, 149–50,
64, 69–70 227
the British Library, 36–7 on Merry, 63, 93–4, 96
collections of Shakespeare, 36 “Oberon and Titania,” 26, 245
establishes the Oracle, 68–70 Bolton, Betsy, 243, 252
and fashionable social network, Bonaparte, Napoleon, 195, 246
35–6 Bonnell, Thomas F., 245
innovative printing methods of, Bostetter, Edward E., 61, 94, 245
36, 45–6, 71, 73, 78, 201 Boyle, Richard, 48
and Merry’s Diversity, 52 Bradford, Richard, 248
and Merry’s political poetry, 23, Brewer, William D., ix, 2, 244, 251
38, 64–5, 85, 93 Brock, Claire, 4, 243
and MR’s Ainsi va le monde, 23, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
64, 86–91 Sonnets from the Portuguese, 123,
and MR’s Poems (1791), 21–2, 93 125
nude Apollo statue of, 36–7 Brunton, Ann, 91
partnership with Topham, 32–3, Bürger, Gottfried August, 208,
35, 47, 65, 66, 67–8 218, 220
Poetry of Anna Matilda, 51 Burke, Edmund, 33
The Poetry of the World, 32–4, on Marie Antoinette, 103
37–8, 47, 49–50 Reflections on the Revolution in
Poets of Great Britain, 36 France, 83, 86, 90, 95, 158
political associations of, 35–6, 38 “the swinish multitude,” 93, 176,
professional relationship with 178
MR, 6, 13, 14, 16–17, 19, and Whig politics, 67, 68
23, 38–9, 65, 67–78, 81–6, Burke, Richard, 33, 50
92–3, 95–8, 155, 201, 247 Byrne, Paula, 4, 246, 253
publisher of newspapers, 16, 18, Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron
23, 24, 32–3, 97 (Lord Byron)
see also Cowley, Hannah; Merry, Byronic hero, 247
Robert; the Oracle; The celebrity of, 1, 4, 244
Poetry of the World; Topham, and Coleridge, 199, 207, 236,
Edward; the World 244
Bennett, Andrew, 3 poetry of, 7, 8
Berkeley, George Monck, 35 Bysshe, Edward
Bertie, Susan, 150 Art of Poetry, 100, 248
Binhammer, Katherine, 248
Biographia Classica, 116 Cadell, Thomas, 93, 116
blank verse, 11, 16, 78, 87, 96, 164, Canning, George, 96, 155
190, 193 Carlos, 32, 82
Index 271

Carter, Elizabeth, 114 Lyrical Ballads, 165, 169, 180,


celebrity, 1–6, 11, 19, 29, 34, 36, 217
92, 110, 113, 117–19, 200, on meter and poetic form, 197–
243–4 200, 201–4, 207, 209–13,
The Celestial Beds, 249 231–3
Cesario, see Vaughan, M. on The Monk, 205
Charlotte, Queen of England, 159, and Morning Post, 14, 113,
161 156, 170, 174, 185–6, 187,
Chatterton, Thomas, 89, 193, 208 189–95
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 90, 238 on MR’s poetry, 8–10, 197–204,
and meter, 207, 230, 231 214, 217–23
Cibber, Colley, 23 “The Nightingale,” 225
Cibber, Susannah “Ode. To Georgiana, Duchess of
The Oracle (comedy), 23, 28 Devonshire,” 186
Cicero, 12, 168 “Ode to the Departing Year,” 226
Clark, Roy Benjamin, 248 Osorio, 170
Clemit, Pamela, 253 relationship with MR, 14, 43,
Clifford, James L., 245, 247 55, 58, 61, 110, 155, 185,
Coleridge, Derwent 187, 200–1, 223–8, 236–40,
subject of MR’s “Ode, Inscribed 254–5
to the Infant Son of S. T. “The Rime of the Ancyent
Coleridge,” 225–7, 229 Marinere,” 199, 210, 213,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 6, 7, 11, 13 217–19, 225
as Albert, 170 “Songs of the Pixies,” 226, 237
“Apotheosis, or the Snow-Drop,” “A Stranger Minstrel,” 222, 223,
190–1, 222 227, 236, 255
Biographia Literaria, 189, 198, “Visions of the Maid of Orleans,”
201–2, 209, 213, 230 191
called “an epicure in sound” by “Voice from the Side of Etna; or,
Wordsworth, 213 The Mad Monk,” 186
“Christabel,” 207, 209, 210, see also Lyrical Ballads;
212–13, 226 Robinson, Mary, “Mrs.
Christabel and Other Poems, 228 Robinson to the Poet
“The Devil’s Thoughts,” 194 Coleridge”
“Fire, Famine, and Slaughter: A Collier, Joseph, 197–8
War Eclogue,” 190 Collins, William
as Francini, 113, 190–1 cited in Sappho and Phaon, 127
“Frost at Midnight,” 225 odes of, 71, 72, 78–81, 237–9
“Kubla Khan,” 8, 14, 43, 199, Conaster, Trey, 248
210, 221, 225–40, 247, 254, Cottle, Joseph, 218
255, 256 couplets, 16, 22–3, 30, 44, 48, 50,
as Laberius, 113, 190 57, 75, 87, 88, 101, 106, 107,
“Lines to an Unfortunate 121, 122, 136, 142, 162,
Woman,” 170 163, 165, 166, 226, 231–3,
“Love,” 213 237, 247
272 Index

Cowley, Abraham, 80 Dryden, John, 80, 88, 90


Cowley, Hannah Dudas, Robert, 171
as Anna Matilda, 8, 17, 35, 37, Duncan, Adam, Admiral, 176
38, 40–7, 50–64, 69, 70, 72,
82, 94, 113, 129, 235, 239, elegy, 41, 43–4, 48, 50, 65, 70,
246, 247 88, 100, 119, 121, 137, 158,
as Armida, 81–2 205, 225, 242
association with Bell, 35, 47 Elyot, Amanda, 243
Merry’s discovery of her identity, English Chronicle, 84
63–4 English Review, 45, 51, 85–6, 89,
“The Pen,” 41–2 237, 240
as playwright, 42, 114 eponymous forms, see nonce forms
and poetic form, 43–4 Erdman, David V., 169, 170, 191,
The Poetry of Anna Matilda, 253, 254
37–8, 51 eroticism, 28–9, 42, 44–6, 51–3,
speculation on identity of Anna 56–7, 81–2, 120, 125–52,
Matilda, 45–6 179–81, 186–7, 200–1,
see also Merry, Robert 235–6, 239–40
Cowper, William, 12, 127 Erskine, Thomas, 106
Craciun, Adriana, 97, 107, 109, Este, Charles, 33, 48, 63
161–2, 168, 171, 176, 244, European Magazine, 105
248, 251, 252 Express and Evening Chronicle, 191
Critical Review, 86, 87, 122, 205
Cross, Ashley, ix, 224, 243, 244, Fairer, David, 237
252, 253, 254, 255 fame, vi, 1–10, 19–22, 33–4, 47,
Curran, Stuart, ix, 2, 3, 8, 10, 31, 48–9, 59–60, 65, 70–1, 77,
163, 185, 219–20, 247, 249, 82, 87–90, 92, 99–100, 105,
251, 252, 254, 255 107–10, 111–52, 174–5,
Curry, Kenneth, 189 177, 191, 203, 206–7, 218,
222, 237, 240–2
Damer, Anne Seymour, 114 Favret, Mary, 255
Dante, 39, 90, 151 Fawkes, Francis, 127, 147, 250
Davenport, Hester, ix, 4, 10, 108, Fay, Elizabeth, 243
154, 171, 244, 246 Feldman, Paula R., ix, 12, 20, 30,
Deacon, Daniel, 86 244–5, 249
DeJean, Joan, 147, 249 Fenwick, Eliza, 29
Della Crusca, see Merry, Robert Ferito, Il, see Merry, Robert
Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, Finch, Anne, 121
28–9, 113, 151, 177, 186 Fitzherbert, Maria, 66–7, 248
Dickens, Charles, 43, 159 Foucault, Michel, 19–20
Dobson, Susannah, 114, 129, 250 Fox, Charles James
Donne, John, 117, 125, 249, 250 and French Revolution, 90, 104
Drayton, Michael, 125, 140 opposition to Pitt, 154, 167, 178
Drury Lane, Theatre Royal, 2, 23, personal relationship with MR, 5,
49, 60, 105 33, 35, 66, 117, 178
Index 273

satirized as “Carlo Khan,” 249 The Baviad, 37–9, 91, 93, 94,
as statesman, 6, 154, 178 235, 246
and Whig politics, 33, 36, 66–8, criticizes Bell and Della Crusca,
83, 105, 110, 167 37, 38, 60–1, 65, 91, 94,
Francis, Anne, 114 99–100, 235, 246, 248
Franklin, Benjamin, 19, 22, 32 MR’s attack on, 106
French Revolution, 64–5, 67–8, Gillman, James, 189
82–6, 87, 90–110, 129, Gillray, James, 249
153–4, 160, 248 Girten, Kristen, 249
Fulford, Tim, ix, 221, 235, 243, Godwin, William
254, 255 friendship with MR, 61, 91, 110,
Fuseli, Henry 120, 124, 154, 178, 200
Titania Awakening, 23 and “Kubla Khan,” 228
Fussell, Paul, 208 political philosophy of, 195, 251
relationship with Coleridge, 195,
Gainsborough, Thomas, 5, 70 200, 253
Gamer, Michael, ix, 4, 36, 94, 204, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
255 The Sorrows of Young Werter, 41,
Garnai, Amy, 95, 103, 107, 248 45, 70, 106, 129, 132
Garrick, David, 3, 23, 49, 77 Goldsmith, Jason, x, 244
Gazetteer and New Daily Gould, Robert, 116
Advertiser, 83, 84, 169, 249 Gray, Thomas, 12
gender, 3, 6, 11–14, 20, 22–9, Elegy Written in a Country
37–8, 60, 70, 92, 106, Churchyard, 158, 160, 242
111–52, 153–4, 156–7, 168, odes of, 79, 80, 239
173–5, 179, 180–1, 182, Greatheed, Bertie, 35
191, 211, 238, 243, 246, as Reuben, 51
254 Greene, Ellen, 250
General Evening Post, 40, 84, 118 Grenville, William Wyndham, 1st
General Magazine and Impartial Baron, 154
Review, 87 Greville, Frances, 26
Gentleman’s Magazine, 169, 192, “A Prayer for Indifference” /
248 “Ode to Indifference,” 26–7
George III, 32, 36, 84, 96, 97, Griffin, Robert J., 19–20
176 Griggs, Earl Leslie, 8, 253, 254
health of, 66, 68 Gristwood, Sarah, 4, 246
parodied as “Farmer George,”
178 Haefner, Joel, 245
support of Pitt’s policies, 104–5, Hardy, Thomas, 153
154, 190 Hargreaves-Mawdsley, W. N., 63,
George IV, see Wales, George 84, 245
Augustus Frederick, Harvey, Elizabeth D., 250
Prince of Havens, R. D., 250
Gifford, William Hawley, Judith, 185–6, 254
attacks MR, 95, 96, 98 Hays, Mary, 115
274 Index

Hazlitt, William, 9, 160, 228, 244 on “Kubla Khan,” 228, 236


Hemans, Felicia, 1, 7 Landon, Carol, 253, 254
Heriot, John, 111–12 Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (L.E.L.),
heroic couplet, see couplets 243
heroic epistle, 127–32, 147, 151, Lane, William, 106
250 Latour, Bruno, 245
see also Ovid, Heroides; Pope, Lau, Beth, 13, 244
Eloisa to Abelard, “Sapho to Lauderdale, James Maitland, 8th
Phaon”; Robinson, “Petrarch Earl of, 97, 155
to Laura” Lawrence, D. H., 42
Herrick, Robert, 22–3 Ledbetter, Kathryn, 254
Hodson, Jane, 244 Lee, Debbie, 245, 255
Holcroft, Thomas, 93, 106 Lee, Sophia, 114
Hoppner, John, 5 Leonardo, see Merry, Robert
Horace, 79, 151, 203, 243 Letters from Perdita to a Certain
Howard, John, 43, 65, 83 Israelite, 249
Hunter, J. Paul, 162–3 Levy, Martin J., 254, 255
Lewis, M. G.
Ignotus, see Kendall, William “Alonzo the Brave and Fair
Inchbald, Elizabeth, 7, 114, 193, Imogine,” 203–4, 206–10,
200 220
Ingram, Anne, Viscountess The Monk, 193, 205, 206, 255;
Howard, 156, 182 see also “Alonzo the Brave
intertextuality, 8, 9, 13–14, 18, 20, and Fair Imogine”
23–7, 34–5, 44, 112–13, Linkin, Harriet, 245
115, 126, 129, 133–4, 155, Lloyd, Charles, 155, 218
190, 223–41 Locke, John, 85
London Corresponding Society, 93
James, Charles, 250 Longinus, 116, 127, 133, 138
Janonwitz, Anne, 162, 244 Louis XIV, King of France, 90
Jerningham, Edward, 35 Louis XVI, King of France, 100–3
Johnson, Samuel, 12, 36, 123 Lowes, John Livingston, 199, 239,
Jones, Shelley A. J., 164 254
Jonson, Ben, 22 ludic poetry, 13, 15–18, 20, 24–5,
Jordan, Mrs. (Dora Bland), 28 35, 39–47, 51–61, 82, 129,
131–2, 140, 174–9, 183–6,
Keats, John, 7, 56, 79 236–7, 239–40
Kendall, William, 35 Luther, Susan, 200, 253, 254
as Ignotus, 82, 247 Lyrical Ballads (1798), 165, 166,
on sonnets, 123, 127 169, 179, 180, 190, 213,
Knowles, Claire, 246 216–17, 252, 255

Labbe, Jacqueline M., ix, 3, 42, 61, Macdonald, Andrew


212, 243, 244, 246, 252 as Matthew Bramble, 173–9
Lamb, Charles, 155, 189, 199 “Odes to Actors, 174–5
Index 275

poems republished by Wolcot, discovery of Anna Matilda’s


174 identity, 63–4
Velina, a Poetical Fragment, 176 Diversity, A Poem, 37, 40, 52, 80,
Vimonda, A Tragedy, 175 88, 238–9, 247
Mackintosh, James, 68, 155, 169, “Elegy, Written after Having
174 Read The Sorrows of Werter,”
Malden, George Capel, Viscount, 41
117 “Elegy on the Plain of Fontenoy,”
Malthus, Daniel, 70 43, 44, 55, 65
Margarot, Maurice, 171 in Florence, 35, 40, 191, 245, 246
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, heroic couplets, 87
4, 40, 95–6, 101–4, 107–9, “Howard, the Phil-Anthrope,”
161, 248 43, 65
Marshall, Roderick, 245, 246 as Il Ferito, 23–4
Mason, William, 80–1, 238, 239 on irregular odes, 80
Matthew Bramble, see Macdonald, The Laurel of Liberty, 23, 38, 64,
Andrew 83–8, 91, 93, 100
Maxwell, William, 93, 248 as Leonardo, 53–5, 64, 66, 67,
Mays, J. C. C., 255 191
McGann, Jerome, 26, 42, 126, 137, ludic-erotic poetry of, 40–1,
245, 246 45–6, 51–2, 60–1, 86
Mellor, Anne K., 2, 3, 4, 243 “Monody. To the Memory of
Memoirs of Perdita, 249 John Howard,” 83
Menander, 116 MR portrays as Mr. Doleful in
Mermin, Dorothy, 121 Walsingham, 151
Merry, Robert MR’s Ainsi va le monde dedicated
“Adieu and Recall to Love,” to, 82–3, 87–90
40–1, 50 Ode for the Fourteenth of July,
association with MR, 6, 13–14, 38, 93
100, 110, 111–13, 151, 183, “Ode on the Restoration of His
236, 240, 241 Majesty,” 64
attacked by Gifford, 37, 91, 94 “Ode to Tranquility,” 77–8, 240,
The British Album, 38–41, 64, 247
69–70 originally “Del Crusca,” 40–1
business relationship with Bell, Ovidian qualities, 40–1
23, 37–8, 47, 69–70, 72, Paulina; or, The Russian
81–2, 92 Daughter, a Poem, 40
contributions to The Florence The Picture of Paris, 93
Miscellany, 41, 88, 245 and Poet Laureateship, 84
deleted from MR’s Ainsi va le poetic correspondence with Anna
monde, 91 Matilda, 32, 41–7, 50–1,
as Della Crusca, 4, 8, 13–14, 55–60, 69–70, 81–2, 235,
15–18, 20, 23–5, 32–61, 240
63–5, 69–95, 129, 191, 226, poetic correspondence with Laura
236–40 (MR), 52–6, 69–70
276 Index

Merry, Robert—Continued Monthly Magazine, 119–20, 123,


The Poetry of the World, 33, 37, 183, 254
40–1, 45, 47–50, 70, 78 Monthly Review, 38–9, 46, 81, 86,
political views of, 40, 64–5, 95, 116
84–6, 90–1, 96–7, 109, 246, More, Hannah, 4, 7, 26, 114, 119,
247–8 175
as popular culture, 46–7, 60–1 Morning Chronicle, 119
as Rinaldo, 81–2, 92, 191 Morning Herald, 117
“Signor Pittachio,” 176, 248 Morning Post
“The Slaves. An Elegy,” 65 attacks Pitt, 167, 176–8
support of the French Revolution, Daniel Stuart edits/owns, 18, 61,
64, 84–6, 90–1, 93–4, 100, 68, 98, 105, 112, 155–6,
110 169, 190, 192–3, 195
supposed to be Anna Matilda, defends MR, 109
51–2, 63 merges with the Gazetteer, 169
“To Anna Matilda,” 43, 44 Merry works for, 81
works at the Morning Post, 81 MR as contributor to, 14, 17,
see also Bell, John; Cowley, 22, 28, 30, 31, 108, 151,
Hannah; Robinson, Mary, 154–95, 198, 216, 219, 227,
Ainsi va le monde, “Ode to 236, 241, 252
Della Crusca” MR as “poetry editor” of, 184–95
Metastasio (Pietro Antonio MR’s “Portia” poems appear in,
Domenico Trapassi), 59 154, 156–63
meter, 9–11, 22, 23, 30, 43–4, 50, MR’s “Tabitha Bramble” poems
57–8, 77–9, 99, 100–1, 103, appear in, 168–83
134, 136, 137, 151, 162, praises Anna Seward, 115
165, 166, 197–204, 207–22, prints MR-related poems by
226, 229–34, 236–9, 241, Wordsworth, 221, 223–4
247, 248 promotes MR’s Walsingham, 170,
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 53 206
Milton, John, 6, 12, 89, 90, 204 publishes Andrew Macdonald’s
Comus, 60 “Matthew Bramble” poems,
Paradise Lost, 177, 238, 252 173–4
sonnets, 121–4, 127, 151, 233, reports gossip about MR, 34, 91,
238, 250 117–18
“To the Nightingale,” 122 reveals identity of Horace Juvenal
Miskolcze, Robin, 252, 255 (MR), 107
misogyny, 142, 144, 156, 181–2 Southey as contributor to, 183–6,
Mitchell, L. G., 248 189–95
Moira, Francis Rawdon Hastings, Whig politics in, 67, 69, 96, 97, 112
2nd Earl of, 241 Most, Glenn W., 250
Mole, Tom, 4, 244 Murray, John, 175
Moloney, Brian, 245, 246
Montagu, Elizabeth, 114 Nagle, Christopher C., 251
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 117, networking, 8, 13–14, 18–19, 21–2,
156 32–61, 64–9, 81–3, 91, 95,
Index 277

105, 108–10, 112–13, 120, Oldys, William, 249


126–7, 138, 154–9, 161, Opie, Amelia, 218
175, 183, 186, 189–91, Oracle, 18, 35, 107
223–8, 235–6, 244, 245 Boaden as editor of, 82, 92, 149
New Annual Register, 37–8 bought by Peter Stuart, 28
Newlyn, Lucy, 238 defends MR, 149
newspapers, 5, 13–14, 16–19, 21–2, established by Bell, 67–8, 70
34, 35–7, 40–1, 66–9, 81, influenced by Pitt’s government,
96–8, 108–10, 112, 117–19, 68–9, 97–8, 161, 247
153–5, 183–6, 246–7 MR’s poems published in, 17,
see also Anti-Jacobin; Argus; 22–8, 32, 38, 59, 67, 72–83,
avatars; Bell, John; Boaden, 92–3, 98–104, 108, 133,
James; English Chronicle; 155, 159, 161–2, 166, 174,
Express and Evening 183
Chronicle; Gazetteer and reports on MR’s health, 192
New Daily Advertiser; see also Bell, John
General Evening Post; Otway, Thomas, 89
Heriot, John; ludic poetry; Ovid, 14, 32, 53, 116, 129, 130,
Macdonald, Andrew; 135, 138
Morning Chronicle; Morning Amores, 41–2
Herald; Morning Post; the Heroides, 127–8, 131, 133, 151,
Oracle; Perry, James; Perry, 250–1
Sampson; Pitt, William; Metamorphoses, 37
Public Advertiser; puff- “Sapho to Phaon” attributed to,
ing; Southey, Robert; Star 126, 132, 136–8, 141–5,
and Evening Advertiser; 147–9, 151
Stuart, Daniel; Stuart, see also Pope, Alexander, “Sapho
Peter; Stuart’s Star and to Phaon”
Evening Advertiser; Sun;
Taylor, John; True Briton; Paine, Thomas, 85, 93, 104, 106,
Werkmeister, Lucyle; 155, 160
Whitehall Evening Post; the Parrish, Stephen, 202, 254
World Parsons, William, 35
nonce forms, 11, 14, 16, 78, 103, Pascoe, Judith, ix, 5, 13, 19, 20, 28,
151, 165–6, 186, 193, 200, 30, 78, 96, 169, 185, 243,
203–23, 255–6 246, 247, 248, 252
see also “Alonzo meter;” Sapphic Percy, Thomas
meter; sonnet; Spenserian Reliques of Ancient English
stanza Poetry, 207–8, 210
Perry, James, 83–4
ode, 11, 15–16, 53, 57–8, 71–4, Perry, Sampson, 109
77–81, 98–100, 103, 161–2, Peterson, Linda H., 243
170, 172, 174–5, 178, 179, Petrarch, 6, 14, 39, 136, 139
183, 203, 225–7, 237, 238, and Della Cruscans, 39, 42,
243, 247, 248 47–50, 59, 92, 246, 250
O’Donnell, Brennan, xi, 214, 244 eroticism, 41–2, 128–32, 142–3
278 Index

Petrarch—Continued see also “Alonzo meter;” bal-


Laura, 34, 47–50, 53, 59, 71–2, lad; blank verse; couplets;
128–31, 152, 250–1 elegy; heroic epistle; meter;
poetic fame, 3, 59, 71, 123–5, nonce forms; ode; quatrains;
229, 241 Sapphic meter; sonnet;
sonnet form and characteristics, Spenserian stanza
54, 55, 112, 120–2, 125–8, A Poetical Epistle from Florizel to
133–5, 137, 140, 146–7, Perdita, 249
203, 241 The Poetry of the World, 32–4,
Phelan, Joseph, 249 37–8, 40–1, 45–50, 70, 93
Philips, Ambrose, 127, 138 Poole, Thomas, 227
translation of Sappho’s ode, 133, Pope, Alexander, 6, 12, 87, 90, 106,
145–7, 251 127, 136, 138, 238
Philips, Katherine, 121 The Dunciad, 106
Phillips, Richard, 227 Eloisa to Abelard, 46, 108,
Pindar, 53, 80, 203 127–32, 151, 250–1
Pindar, Peter, see Wolcot, John Essay on Criticism, An, 89, 162,
Piozzi, Hester, 35, 40–1, 45, 63, 201–2
114, 246, 247 “First Epistle of the Second Book
Pitt, William (the younger), 21, 216 of Horace Imitated,” 88
abuses of power, 68, 104, 105, “First Satire of the Second Book
110, 153–4, 157, 166–7, 195 of Horace Imitated,” 55
influence on the press, 66, 67, 69, “On the Characters of Women,”
97, 154–5 156, 182
King’s illness, 67 The Rape of the Lock, 130
rewards Pye with laureateship, 84 “Sapho to Phaon,” 133, 137, 138,
satirized, 167, 176–8, 182, 190, 141–3, 151
248, 251 Satires of Dr. John Donne, “Satire
war with France, 97, 104 II,” 117
and Whig politics, 36 pornography, 117–18, 249
Plato, 76, 115 Porter, Jane, 119, 187
Platonic/platonic love, 46, 54–5, Portland, William Henry
63, 82, 92 Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd
Plumptre, Ann, 114 Duke of, 105, 178, 248
Plymley, Joseph, 250 Pratt, Lynda, 188
Poe, Edgar Allan, 8 Pratt, Samuel Jackson
“Ulalume,” 221 as “Courtney Melmoth,” 113
Poet Laureate, 49, 84 friendship with MR, 31, 183, 187
see also Pye, Henry James; likely author of continuation of
Warton, Thomas MR’s Memoirs, 10, 170, 187,
poetic form, 6, 8–11, 15–16, 43–4, 211
53, 54–5, 57–8, 60, 71–2, MR writes tributary poems to,
74, 77–81, 99–100, 103, 17, 252
121–5, 131–52, 161–3, 165, writes tributary poems to MR,
217, 242, 244 227
Index 279

Price, Richard, 85 collects MR’s poems for The Wild


Priestley, Joseph, 86 Wreath, 210
Prins, Yopie, 250 edits MR’s 1806 Poetical Works,
prosody, see meter 31, 91
pseudonymity, 5, 8, 13–14, 15–22, and MR’s Memoirs, 10, 170, 187,
23, 31, 32, 34, 37, 39–41, 49, 211
70–1, 74, 113, 114, 156–62, MR’s Oberon poems written for,
167–72, 173–4, 184, 190–2, 26–7
218, 245, 246, 247 publishes Coleridge’s “A Stranger
see also avatars Minstrel,” 227–8, 236
Public Advertiser, 65, 118 Robinson, Mary Darby
puffing, 5, 29, 33, 37, 51, 57, 72, ambivalent political views of, 9,
75, 81, 84, 93, 98, 105, 107, 14, 61, 65, 68–9, 96–110,
149, 150, 170, 187, 192, 248 153–4
Purkis, Samuel, 200 and baroque form, 77–81
Pye, Henry James, 84–5, 177, 208, blamed other women for her mis-
251 fortunes, 119–20, 182
career as actress, 2, 3–5, 23, 35,
Quarterly Review, 94 49–50, 60, 70, 75–7
quatrains, 22, 43, 44, 48, 79, 120, considers poetry more serious
121, 137, 162, 163, 215, than fiction, 114–15
222, 226, 231, 233 as “English Sappho”/“British
see also elegy; sonnet Sappho,” 6, 14, 17, 38, 81,
105, 110, 111–52, 192, 203,
Radcliffe, Ann, 115, 186, 205 222, 236, 240
Rambler’s Magazine, 118 obituary of, 111–12
Reid, W. Hamilton, 121–2 “Perdita” epithet applied to, 3–4,
Reuben, see Greatheed, Bertie 33–4, 39, 50, 87, 117–19,
reviews, 1, 11–12, 38–9, 45–6, 56, 149–51
71, 85–6, 87, 89, 91, 95, 97, physical beauty of, 2, 5, 75–6
107, 116, 122, 205, 206, as “poetry editor” of the Morning
228, 237, 240 Post, 183–95, 253
Reynolds, Frederick, 63–4, 84, 96 political radicalism of, 9, 61, 90,
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 1, 5, 6, 38, 91, 104, 107, 110, 112, 124,
39, 70, 75–7, 89, 107, 247 154–5, 157–68, 169, 190,
Richards, I. A., 201 252
Rinaldo, see Merry, Robert relationship with Tarleton, 5, 32,
Robespierre, Maximilien, 93, 153, 51, 96, 126, 150, 158–9,
167 178
Robinson, Daniel, 2, 169, 185, 245, return to England, 32–4
249, 250, 255, 256 subject of gossip, 34–6, 65–6,
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 250 92, 95–6, 112, 116–19, 150,
Robinson, Jeffrey C., 31, 238, 246, 243–4
247 see also Bell, John; Coleridge,
Robinson, Maria Elizabeth Samuel Taylor; Fox, Charles
280 Index

Robinson, Mary Darby—Continued “Elegy to the Memory of Richard


James; Garrick, David; Boyle,” 48
gender; Godwin, William; “The Exile,” 191
Merry, Robert; meter; “The Fortune Teller,” 169, 179,
Morning Post; networking; 181–2
newspapers; poetic form; “Fragment, Supposed To Be
Reynolds, Sir Joshua; sexual- Written near the Temple, on
ity; Stuart, Daniel; Taylor, the Night before the Murder
John; Wolcot, John; women of Louis the Sixteenth,”
writers 101–3
POETRY “The Gamester,” 252
“The Admonition,” 183 “The Granny Grey,” 169, 179,
“Admonitory Ode VIII. Tabitha 181
Bramble to Peter Pindar,” “The Grey-Beard,” 183
178–9 “Harvest Home,” 254
“The African,” 253 “The Haunted Beach,” 186,
“Agnes,” 179 198–9, 201, 213, 218–23,
Ainsi va le monde, 21, 23, 38, 64, 253
82–3, 87–91, 96, 98, 101, “[Heav’n knows, I never would
110 repine],” 109–10
“All Alone,” 179 “The Hermit of Mont Blanc,”
“All For-Lorn,” 179 254
“Anacreontic,” 252 “A Hue and Cry,” 29
“Anselmo, the Hermit of the “The Ingredients which
Alps,” 186 Compose Modern Love,”
“The Beau’s Remonstrance,” 179
179 “Invocation,” 25–6, 28
“The Bee and the Butterfly,” “The Italian Peasantry,” 254
60–1 “January, 1795,” 162–3
“The Birth-Day,” see “St. James’s “Jasper,” 198, 200, 203, 213,
Street” 217–18
“Burlesque Sonnet,” 151 “The Lady of the Black Tower,”
“The Camp” (“Winkfield Plain”), 210, 212–13
30–1, 162 “The Lascar,” 179
“The Cavern of Woe,” 96 “Laura Maria to Peter Pindar,
“The Cell of the Atheist,” 254 Esq.,” 252
“The Confessor—A Sanctified “Laura to Petrarch,” see “Sonnet.
Tale,” 32, 169, 179, 181 Laura to Petrarch”
“A Cure for Love,” 151 “Lesbia and Her Lover,” 179,
“Deborah’s Parrot,” see “The 182
Tell Tale; or, Deborah’s “Lewin and Gynneth,” 166,
Parrot” 210
“The Deserted Cottage,” 252 “Life,” 70
“Donald and Mary,” 210 “Lines, On Reading Mr. Pratt’s
“The Doublet of Grey,” 193, Volume ‘Gleaning through
206–7, 209, 210 England,’” 252
Index 281

“Lines Addressed to a Beautiful “The Muse,” 52–5; see also “Ode


Infant,” 29 to the Muse”
“Lines Dedicated to the Memory “The Negro Girl,” 165–6; see also
of a Much-Lamented Young “The Storm”
Gentleman,” 34, 48–50 “The Nettle and the Daisy,”
“Lines Inscribed to the 252
Memory of David Garrick, “A New Song, to an Old Tune,”
Esq.,” 77 172, 177–8
“Lines on Beauty,” 72–4, 80; see “Oberon, to the May Fly,” 29
also “Ode to Beauty” “Oberon to Maria on Seeing
“Lines to Him Who Will Her Gather Some Pensees,”
Understand Them,” 33; see 26
also “To Him Who Will “Oberon to Titania,” 29
Understand It” “Ode, Inscribed to the Infant
“Lines to the Memory of Richard Son of S. T. Coleridge,
Boyle,” 48 Esq.,” 222, 223, 225–7
“Love and Reason,” 153–4 “Ode for the 18th of January,
“A Lover’s Vow,” 151 1794,” 161–2
“Love’s Four Senses,” 29 “Ode Fourth. For New Year’s
Lyrical Tales, 110, 165, 166, 169, Day,” 171, 177
179, 180, 190, 195, 204, “Ode to Beauty,” 72–3, 80–1; see
210, 213, 216–17, 219, 243, also “Lines on Beauty”
252, 255 “Ode to Della Crusca,” 77–8,
“The Maniac,” 255–6 226, 239, 241
“Marie Antoinette’s “Ode to Despair,” 98
Lamentation, in Her “Ode to Envy,” 78–9
Prison of the Temple,” 101, “Ode to Humanity,” 99–100
103– 4 Ode to the Harp of the Late
“The Mince Pie,” 179 Accomplished and Amiable
“The Miser,” 252 Louisa Hanway, 38
“The Mistletoe. A Christmas “Ode to the Muse,” 53; see also
Tale,” 180 “The Muse”
“Mistress Gurton’s Cat,” 169 “Ode to Winter,” 183
“Modern Female Fashions,” “Old Barnard. A Monkish Tale,”
179 169, 179
“Modern Male Fashions,” 179 “The Old Beggar,” 179
Modern Manners, 106–8, 173, “The Old Shepherd,” 183
245 “On Seeing the Crayon
Monody to the Memory of Sir Landscapes of Peter Pindar,”
Joshua Reynolds, 6, 38, 252
107 “Penelope’s Epitaph,” 242, 256
Monody to the Memory of the Late “Petrarch to Laura,” 127–33,
Queen of France, 107–9 139, 151, 250
“Mrs. Robinson to the Poet Poems (1791), 21–2, 25, 38,
Coleridge,” 8, 58, 199, 223, 77–8, 95
225, 227–37, 239 Poems (1794), 98, 210
282 Index

Robinson, Mary Darby—Continued “Stanzas to My Beloved


Poetical Works (1806), 31, 91 Daughter,” 26
“The Poet’s Garret,” vi “Stanzas Written in Hyde-Park
“Poor Marguerite,” 179 on Sunday Last,” 28–9
“The Poor Singing Dame,” 179, “The Storm,” 164–6; see also
198, 199, 203, 213–15, 218 “The Negro Girl”
“Pretty Susan,” 179, 183 “The Summer Day,” 183
“The Progress of Liberty,” 87, “Sweet Madeline of Aberdee,”
190, 193, 194, 253–4 29
“St. James’s Street,” 159–63, “Tabitha Bramble, to her Cousins
192 in Scotland,” 171
“Sappho, to Phaon,” 151 “Tabitha Bramble Visits the
“Sappho, to the Aspin Tree,” Metropolis by Command of
151–2 her Departed Brother,” 169,
Sappho and Phaon, 14, 54, 171–3
112–13, 115, 120–52, 153, “Taste and Fashion,” 182–3
157, 164, 166, 190, 203, “The Tell Tale; or, Deborah’s
249, 250, 251 Parrot,” 169, 179, 180
“Sappho—To Night,” 151 “Titania’s Answer to Oberon,”
“The Savage of Aveyron,” 29
210–11 “To Anna Matilda,” 57–60
“Second Ode to the “To Arabelle!,” 29
Nightingale,” 77 “To Eloquence,” 77
“The Shepherd’s Dog,” 179 “To Him Who Will Understand
Sight, 96–7, 108 It,” 50–1, 58; see also
“A Simple Tale,” 171, 176 “Lines to Him Who Will
“Sir Raymond of the Castle,” Understand Them”
166, 210 “To Liberty,” 154, 157–8
“The Snow Drop,” 190 “To Meditation,” 77
“Solitude,” 96 “To Melancholy,” 77
“Sonnet [‘Night’s dewy orb’],” “To Philanthropy,” 154, 157–9
81 “To Reflection,” 77
“Sonnet [‘Say, Stern “To Rinaldo,” 81–2
Oppression’],” 172 “To Sir Joshua Reynolds,” 75–7,
“Sonnet, To the Prince of Wales,” 89; see also Ainsi va le
32 monde
“Sonnet. Laura to Petrarch,” 152 “To the Blue-Bell,” 16
“Sonnet. To Leonardo,” 55 “To the Memory of Werter,” 70
“Sonnet to Lesbia,” 133–4 “To the Muse of Poetry,” 82
“Sonnet to Mrs. Charlotte “To the Nightingale,” 77
Smith,” 27–8 “To the Poet Coleridge,” see
“Stanzas, Written between Dover “Mrs. Robinson to the Poet
and Calais,” 32 Coleridge”
“Stanzas on the Duchess of “To the Queen of the Fairies,”
Devonshire’s Indisposition,” 29 23–5
Index 283

“To the Wild Brook,” 252 PSEUDONYMS/AVATARS


“Verses on the 19th of Anne Frances Randall, 113–14
December,” 167–8 Bridget, 32, 183
“When I Was Young,” 179 Horace Juvenal, 106–7, 173
“Winkfield Plain,” see “The Humanitas, 32, 167–8, 176
Camp” Julia, 16, 32, 39, 82, 105, 183
“Written During the Late Stormy Laura, 17, 25, 32, 34–5, 38–9,
Weather,” 183 48–60, 64, 65, 66–7, 69, 70,
“Written Near an Old Oak,” 82, 92, 105, 127, 152, 171,
29 183, 191, 225, 236, 247
“Written on Seeing a Rose Still Laura Maria, 14, 15, 17–18, 22,
Blooming,” 224 25, 32, 38–9, 65, 66–83, 84,
“Written on the Sea-Shore,” 29 86–105, 127, 157, 159, 162,
OTHER WRITING 166, 180, 183, 247, 252, 254
Angelina, 109, 154, 164 Lesbia, 32, 183
The False Friend, 139, 194 Oberon, 17, 20, 22–32, 38–9,
Hubert de Sevrac, 112, 164, 105, 113, 171, 183, 247
251 Portia, 14, 30, 32, 154, 156–68,
Kate of Aberdeen, 106–7 178, 179, 192
A Letter to the Women of Sappho, 32, 39, 72, 115, 183,
England, 2, 7, 113–14, 236, 247
156–7, 182, 194, 244 Tabitha Bramble, 14, 31–2, 151,
letters, 31, 108–9, 118, 119, 120, 168–90, 193, 252
154, 171, 187, 188, 240, Robinson, Terry F., 4
248, 253 Robinson, Thomas, 27
Memoirs, 9–10, 17, 23, 26, 31, Romney, George, 5, 70
33, 49, 50, 87, 91, 119, 139, Runge, Laura L., 243
170–1, 187–9, 210–11, 227,
236, 243, 245, 248, 253, Sacchini, Antonio, 52, 82
255 Sade, Abbé de, 129
The Natural Daughter, 2, 15–18, Saglia, Diego, 243
75, 139, 153, 194 Saint-Foix, Germain-François de, 23
Preface to Sappho and Phaon, Sapphic meter, 136–7, 193, 203,
123–7, 132, 134, 141–2 222–3
“The Present State of the Sappho, 6, 14, 39, 81, 112, 114,
Manners, Society, &c. &c. of 120–52
the Metropolis of England,” ode by, 133, 138, 145–7, 251
119–20 sexuality of, 115–16
The Sicilian Lover, 164 see also Addison, Joseph; Fawkes,
“Sylphid” essays, 194, 254 Francis; Longinus; Philips,
Vancenza, 38, 95, 115 Ambrose; Pope, Alexander,
Walsingham, 2, 112, 139, 151, “Sapho to Phaon”;
154, 164, 168, 170, 190, Robinson, Mary, Sappho and
191, 193, 206, 242, 255, Phaon, preface to Sappho and
256 Phaon
284 Index

Satire on the Present Times, 249 slave trade, 65, 158–9, 164–6
Scott, Sir Walter, 8, 204, 208 Smith, Charlotte, 1, 7, 27–8, 41, 45,
Scourge and Satirist, 228 59, 70, 89, 113, 114, 115,
Sensibility, 26–7, 37, 41, 45–6, 53, 121–3, 125, 127, 151, 200,
57, 70, 115, 126, 128–31, 205, 244, 245, 249, 250
132, 139, 141, 144, 153, 211 celebrates Thomas Otway, 89
Setzer, Sharon, ix, 2, 11, 188, 244, disdains association with MR, 27
253, 254 Elegiac Sonnets, 41, 45, 59, 121,
Seward, Anna 249, 250
as literary rival to MR, 114, 115, illegitimate sonnets of, 121–4,
125 127, 151
on sonnets, 123–4, 250 as literary rival to MR, 114, 125
thought to be Anna Matilda, 45, MR’s Oberon sonnet to, 27–8
246 as novelist, 115, 205
sexuality, 5, 82, 113–19, 126–31, Smollett, Tobias
132–5, 137–48, 200, 249, Humphry Clinker, 168, 171–4,
251 177–8
Shaffer, Julie, ix, 2, 244 Smucker, Samuel, 185
Shakespeare, William, 89, 204, 238 sonnet, 11, 14, 16, 20, 27–8, 32,
Bell’s editions of, 36 41, 45, 48, 54–5, 57, 59, 80,
Julius Caesar, 156 81, 111–52, 154–8, 162,
King Lear, 160 172, 203, 205, 231–4, 241,
Macbeth, 30, 162, 219 247, 249–50
The Merchant of Venice, 156–8 see also Milton, John; Petrarch;
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Robinson, Mary, Sappho
22, 24, 25–7, 29, 229 and Phaon; Seward, Anna;
MR as actress in plays by, 2, 3, 5, Shakespeare, William;
23, 70, 149 Sidney, Sir Philip; Smith,
Much Ado about Nothing, 94–5 Charlotte, Elegiac Sonnets
Romeo and Juliet, 2, 27 The Sorrows of Young Werter, see
sonnets, 52, 120–2, 125–6, 250 Goethe
Venus and Adonis, 103 Southey, Robert, 8, 155, 210
Warton’s characterization of, 52 and “Alonzo” meter, 206–7
The Winter’s Tale, 3, 5, 23, 66, edits Annual Anthology, 217–19,
76, 149 221
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 7, 247 “The Battle of Blenheim,” 218
“Ode to the West Wind,” 79, as Byondo, 184
150–1 Coleridge praises MR to, 197,
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 6, 23, 200–3, 205, 217, 219, 221
33, 35–6, 49, 66–8, 97, 105, The Curse of Kehama, 198
167 “The Devil’s Thoughts,” 194
Siddons, Sarah, 149, 157 English Eclogues, 179, 252
Sidney, Sir Philip, 125 “The Guns Have Ceased their
Astrophil and Stella, 140, 142 Thunder,” 188
Sisman, Adam, 253 humanitarian poetry of, 166,
Skirving, William, 171 180, 252
Index 285

Joan of Arc, 191 Tarleton, Banastre, 5, 32, 33, 50–1,


and “Kubla Khan,” 199, 228, 53, 96, 105, 117, 126, 150,
255 158–9, 178, 185
“Mary [the Maid of the Inn],” Tasker, William, 236
206 Tasso, Torquato, 82, 151
“On the Settlement of Sierra Taylor, Jane, 248
Leona,” 192 Taylor, John
“The Poet Perplext,” 183–4 conservative politics of, 96–7,
political associations, 61 110, 153, 251
pseudonyms of, 21 editor of True Briton, 96, 105,
replaces MR at the Morning Post, 109, 110, 153
192–3 friendship with MR, 66, 75,
“The Ring,” 193 96–7, 105, 111, 120, 154,
“The Ruined Cottage,” 252 227, 251
“St. Juan Gualberto,” 218 MR dedicates Sight to, 96–7, 108
“St. Patrick’s Purgatory,” 194 MR portrays as Mr. Optic in
Thalaba the Destroyer, 192 Walsingham, 154
as Walter, 192 tenure at the Morning Post, 66, 174
“The Widow,” 193, 223 writes tributary poems to MR,
works for the Morning Post, 227, 236
14, 156, 169, 179, 183–6, Taylor, William, of Norwich, 192,
187–95, 253 208, 218, 220
Spence, Thomas, 93 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 8, 222
Spenser, Edmund, 12, 90, 96, 99, theatricality, 2, 19–22, 77, 157, 235
125, 127, 238 Thelwall, John, 96, 108, 153
Amoretti, 142 Themira, 28
The Faerie Queene, 137 Thomas, Millecent, 114
Spenserian stanza, 11, 176, 203, Thomson, James, 12, 48
214, 220 Tighe, Mary, 243
Star and Evening Advertiser Tomory, Peter, 249
(newspaper), 60, 67–8, 69 Tooke, John Horne, 93, 153, 248
Steele, Richard, 19 Topham, Edward
Stelzig, Eugene, 254 business partnership with Bell,
Stuart, Daniel, 6, 18, 66, 207, 211 32, 38, 47, 66, 67–9
edits/owns Morning Post, 97–8, conductor of the World, 35–6,
105, 112, 151, 153–95, 206, 37, 45, 48, 51, 54, 56, 57, 84
219, 221, 223–5 editor of Poetry of The World, 32,
MR’s association with, 13, 47, 50, 93
17, 19, 22, 31, 61, 151, friendship with Merry/Della
153–95, 198, 223–5, 236, Crusca, 39–41, 53, 63, 81,
240, 241 83, 84
Stuart, Peter, 28, 67–8, 69 Town and Country Magazine, 87, 91
Stuart’s Star and Evening Advertiser Tresham, Henry, 249
(newspaper), 67–8 True Briton, 96, 98, 105, 108–9,
Sun (newspaper), 96, 111–12 112, 153–4
Swift, Jonathan, 19, 22 Ty, Eleanor, 243
286 Index

Vargo, Lisa, ix, 169, 172, 252, 254 Whelan, Timothy, 200
Vaughan, M. (Cesario), 35, 82, 113, Whig politics, 5, 33, 35–6, 66–9,
247 83, 97, 104–5, 110, 167,
Vaughan, Thomas, 35, 247 177–8, 247, 248
Venette, Nicolas, 116 see also Bell, John; Burke,
Vernooy-Epp, Dawn, ix, 244 Edmund; Fox, Charles
Vierri, Alessandro, 116 James; Pitt, William;
The Vis-à-Vis of Berkeley Square, 249 Portland, Duke of; Sheridan,
Richard Brinsley; Topham,
Wales, George Augustus Frederick, Edward; Wales, Prince of
Prince of (later George IV) Whitehall Evening Post, 69
Bell as bookseller to, 36, 68 Wilberforce, William, 158
buys control of Morning Post, 67 Wiley, Michael, 252
called Florizel, 3, 66, 117, 149, Williams, Helen Maria, 7, 26, 70,
151, 249 114, 243, 245
and King’s illness, 67 Williams, John (Anthony Pasquin),
marries Caroline of Brunswick, 150
97, 150 Wilson, Carol Shiner, 245
military career of, 31, 97 Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., 10
MR friendly with, 33, 65–6, 95 Wolcot, John (Peter Pindar), 3, 61,
MR publishes sonnet to, 32 66, 79, 91, 113, 171–9, 183,
MR’s affair with, 3–4, 5, 31, 227, 236, 243, 251, 252
65–6, 116–18 Wolfson, Susan J., 7, 9, 10, 13, 244,
MR’s bitterness towards, 214 255
and MR’s Sappho and Phaon, Wollstonecraft, Mary, 7, 86, 91, 96,
149–50 106 110, 126, 178, 244
and newspapers, 23, 35, 36, 67, women writers, 1, 7, 11–13, 20, 72,
248 92, 113–16, 119–20, 121,
separation from wife, 29, 150 124–5, 156, 243–5
Sheridan’s relationship with, 68, see also Robinson, Mary, Letter
97 to the Women of England,
social life of, 29, 36 Sappho and Phaon
subscriber to MR’s 1791 Poems, Woodcock, George, 249
95 Woodring, Carl, 191
Walpole, Horace, 94 Woof, Robert, 253, 254
Warton, Joseph Wordsworth, Dorothy, 195
The Enthusiast, 52 Wordsworth, William, 7, 8, 9, 11,
“Ode to Fancy,” 71–2, 237 195, 210, 236
odes, 79, 238 adds Coleridge’s “Love” to 1800
Warton, Thomas, 84 Lyrical Ballads, 213
Wells, Mary, 35 advertisement to Lyrical Ballads,
Werkmeister, Lucyle, 67, 97, 107, 61, 216
110, 174, 246, 247, 248, 253 “Alcæus to Sappho,” 186–7,
Werter, see Goethe 223–4
Wesling, Donald, 10, 231 calls Coleridge “an epicure in
Wheeler, Kathleen M., 235 sound,” 213
Index 287

“The Complaint of the Forsaken “The Ruined Cottage,” 252


Indian Woman,” 166 “Simon Lee,” 216
“The Convict,” 190 “The Solitude of Binnorie,” 186,
“The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale,” 221–2, 253
186 and the sonnet, 122–3, 250
“The Female Vagrant,” 214 “The Thorn,” 166, 216
“Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” see also Lyrical Ballads
213–17 World (newspaper), 18, 25, 66–9,
Hazlitt on the “levelling” muse 81, 189
of, 160 competition with Bell’s Oracle,
“Intimations” ode, 79 69–70, 72, 81–3, 92
Lyrical Ballads, 165, 166, 169, MR’s poems published in, 48–52,
179–80, 204, 213, 217, 243, 57–60, 67, 70, 174
252, 255 poetry of Della Crusca and Anna
“The Mad Mother,” 166 Matilda published in, 32–43,
on meter and poetic form, 202, 51–2, 64, 78, 83
231, 244 puffs Merry, 84–5
and the Morning Post, 156, 190 supported by the Treasury, 66–9,
as Mortimer, 190 93
“Ode to Duty,” 73 see also Bell, John; Topham,
poetry of compared with MR’s, Edward
8, 11, 73, 79, 122, 123, Wroth, Lady Mary, 121
160, 165, 166, 169, 179, Wycherley, William, 116–17
180, 210, 243, 252, 255; see Wynn, Charles, 193, 206
also Wordsworth, “Goody
Blake and Harry Gill,” “The Yates, Mary Ann, 49–50
Solitude of Binnorie” Yearsley Ann, 12, 193
preface to Lyrical Ballads,
134, 201, 202, 204–5, Zuccato, Edoardo, 129, 246, 249,
216 250

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