The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

124 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

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

for the poet who is skillful enough to meet its demands.^12 Accordingly,

Robinson represents herself in the preface to Sappho and Phaon as the

defender of the sonnet from the degradation of illegitimate practices—

“that chaos of dissipated pursuits which has too long been growing

like an overwhelming shadow”—from those who would undermine

its dignity, and from those poetasters guilty of “idleness” and formal

“prof ligacy” (1: 322). Robinson writes, “I confess myself such an

enthusiastic votary of the Muse, that any innovation which seems to

threaten even the least of her established rights, makes me tremble”

(1: 322). But her preface also expresses Robinson’s disappointment

in her own career, complaining that her contemporary moment is, on

the whole, culturally degenerate. She argues that “in those centuries

when the poets’ laurels have been most generously fostered in Britain,

the minds and manners of the natives have been most polished and

enlightened” (1: 323). This complaint is a thinly veiled justification

of her poetic talents and of her own sense of entitlement. Despite her

incipient radicalism, the poet longs for the days of aristocratic patron-

age as preferable to the vicissitudes of commercial publication. She

laments that fame comes too late for many worthy poets who “were,

when living, suffered to languish, and even to perish, in obscure pov-

erty” (1: 323). She offers as a counterexample Petrarch, who enjoyed

fame while he was alive:

Petrarch was crowned with laurels, the noblest diadem, in the Capitol

of Rome: his admirers were liberal, his contemporaries were just; and

his name will stand upon record, with the united and honourable testi-

mony of his own talents and the generosity of his country. (1: 323–4)

Not even Milton enjoyed such contemporary eminence, and Robinson

sees no one among her peers enjoying such success. Her culture’s fail-

ure to recognize poetic excellence is “a national disgrace”; she asserts

that “there are both POETS and PHILOSOPHERS, now living in Britain,

who, had they been born in any other clime, would have been hon-

oured with the proudest distinctions, and immortalized to the latest

posterity” (1: 324). Robinson may intend an oblique reference to her

new friend Godwin as among the living philosophers neglected by

the public, but as far as those neglected poets are concerned, she is of

course identifying herself.

As she claims legitimacy for herself as a poet by writing sonnets,

Robinson appears to offer a gesture of solidarity to her poetic sisters

who have their own claims to make. She pays tribute to her “illustrious

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1249780230100251_05_ch03.indd 124 12/28/2010 11:08:40 AM12/28/2010 11:08:40 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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