The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates I 175

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

could easily all be in fun as well, because her “brother” Matthew was

not tremendously successful—certainly not as successful as Robinson

herself and Wolcot were.

Tabitha, admittedly a poetic novice, goes on to invoke the muses

as an announcement of her arrival on the scene:

Then hail me, all ye Nine,

Hail TABITHA, divine!

For ere I quit the proud Parnassian throng,

I’ll ring your sacred ears with many a song. (1: 347; 47–50)

Macdonald performs a similar maneuver in the ode that opens his

series of Odes to Actors in December of 1789, signed “Matthew

Bramble, Esq.” He addresses “Immortal Peter” and his infamous

satires on the Royal Academy, Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians

(1782–6), and compares his satirical project with Peter Pindar’s:

Painters and Play’rs have this one common feature,

They hold the faithful “mirror up to Nature,”

At least the better sort; for some there are

Who with plain Nature wage eternal war. (Morning Post 21

December 1789)

Macdonald knew something about the theatre, having written several

plays, including Vimonda, a Tragedy, which was staged in Edinburgh

and Haymarket in 1787. The Odes to Actors continued over the course

of several weeks, finally numbering twenty- two poems. When he died

suddenly in 1790, notice of his death and obituaries appeared in vari-

ous newspaper columns under the heading “Matthew Bramble.” John

Murray, the elder, rushed a volume of collected works into print to

assist Macdonald’s widow; the list of subscribers was published in

the papers and included the Kemble and Siddons brothers. This is

the book that Wolcot republished in 1797. In making a move simi-

lar to Macdonald’s hearkening to Peter Pindar, Robinson as Tabitha

Bramble appellates her peers in her new network and thus articulates

her space within it.

Robinson’s first poem suggests that her target will be literary

critics, bad poets, and dramatists, including Hannah More, a favor-

ite target of Peter Pindar. Again, by claiming the targets of her

compeers for herself, she highlights her arrival and participation in

the network. At the end of the first poem, Robinson’s Tabitha sees

the ghost of Macdonald’s Matthew who commands that she take

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