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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.
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Sources and Symbols xi
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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)
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:
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 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
Be l l’s L au r e at e s I I: . . . S o G oe s
t h e Wor l d
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
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.
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:
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:
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:
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
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”:
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.”
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:
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
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
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,
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
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
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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)
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” “This” is of course the
sonnet, and Robinson understood the conceit.13
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
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
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
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
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
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:
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
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
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
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
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:
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
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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
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
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
that points directly to the literary and satirical associations the poet
wishes to make:
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
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,
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
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)
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
The previous day’s paper justifies such confidence, for here we see all
three poets in juxtaposition:
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
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)
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
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)
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.
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
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:
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:
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:
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
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
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
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:
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 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
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:
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.
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”:
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
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.
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
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264 Wor k s C i t e d
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
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
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