154 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonrationality 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 Tr u e B r iton in
this novel, a tale replete with radical political inf lections, 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 Tr u e B r iton 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 Tr u e B r iton, 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
Tr u e B r iton, 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 Tr u e
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- f ledged avatar;
Robinson does own up to it by reprint ing t wo 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 changes9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1549780230100251_06_ch04.indd 154 12/28/2010 11:08:48 AM12/28/2010 11:08:48 AM
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