The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates I 173

Scottish Captain Lismahago (who has been scalped by the Miami

Indians) and Matthew suspects that she does so “for no other rea-

son but that she despaired of making a more agreeable conquest”

(382). He nonetheless is relieved to report at the end that “captain

Lismahago has taken Tabby off my hands” (389). Robinson’s Tabitha

Bramble, however, is still single, and in one line she even refers to her

“Virgin brows” (1: 346; 13). The first stanza of “Tabitha Bramble

Visits the Metropolis” reads as follows:

From Mountains, barren, bleak, and bare,

Where howls the boist’rous North!

Sunk in the sullen sadness of despair,

A weeping sister wanders forth!

Not in light weeds Ephesian clad,

But deeply and supremely sad!

Like pure Andromache, that matron old,

(So out of fashion)

Or fair Lucretia! She who died,

(As we are told)

Of Chastity the victim and the pride,

To punish Tarquin’s rude and guilty passion! (1: 346; 1–12)

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

refined, and thus wholly inaccurate, version of Smollett’s character.

This poem, by the way, is unique in featuring Robinson’s only refer-

ence to Homer’s Iliad in any of her poems and, in the reference to

Tarquin, her only rape joke. While the poem is not devoid of humor,

the humor it possesses does not come from a recognizably Smollett-

esque character, certainly not from this speaker here. Where the poem

is satirical, its targets, moreover, are obscure. I might like to read

the poem as a self- parody of Robinson’s own pretentiousness, which

had emerged painfully enough in her 1793 satirical poem Modern

Manners, with its cringe- inducing signature “Horace Juvenal.” At one

point in the poem at hand, Robinson’s Tabitha sarcastically mocks

literary critics as “the sapient cognoscenti of the age” (1: 347; 28).

Again, not something Smollett’s Tabitha would say—unless the joke

were meant to be on her.

We must accept that Robinson does mean to re- imagine the charac-

ter. For these first Tabitha poems she wanted to create a female persona

for satire similar to her friend Wolcot’s “Peter Pindar.” As it turns out,

“Matthew Bramble” did die in 1790 in the person of Scottish poet

Andrew Macdonald (c.1755–90); Macdonald had published occa-

sional satirical pieces under the pseudonym “Matthew Bramble” in the

9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1739780230100251_06_ch04.indd 173 12/28/2010 11:08:51 AM12/28/2010 11:08:51 AM

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

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