The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates II 201

it more likely that Coleridge was charmed by the vivacity of Robinson’s

mind and by his own assessment of her poetry.

Coleridge is, as he says, “pleased” by her forms. For Coleridge,

form and meter work as a concrete representation of the poem’s “mat-

ter” in such a way as to create a physical and imaginative response

of pleasure. Robinson’s forms are exciting to him because he can

account for what she has done in the construction of them but not

precisely how they achieve their effect. He admits of the ineffabil-

ity of his pleasure when he remarks on “The Haunted Beach” that

“it is unfortunate it should seem so bad—for it is really good.” His

analytical powers fail him here. The poetic and the erotic work in

tandem; poetry is supposed to give imaginative and even physical

pleasure. Robinson’s metrical practice is a manifestation of her phys-

icality, particularly in the heightened technical exhilaration evident

in her approach to form and versification. Her first publisher, Bell, a

pioneer in book design and production, attempted to represent the

sensuousness of her poetry through distinctive printing features,

as we have seen. In this way, even the printing of her poetry pro-

vides a visual representation of the extent to which the impact—

the pleasure—depends upon metrical effects. And, as I.A. R ichards

long ago reminded us, the effect of meter is not found outside of

ourselves but within our bodies; he calls it “a vast cyclic agitation

spreading all over the body, a tide of excitement pouring through

the channels of the mind” (46). Robinson’s poetry possesses formal

qualities that serve no other purpose than excitement and pleasure.

Of course, Richards is partly echoing Coleridge, who, in the conten-

tious chapter 18 of the Biographia Literaria, insists that “the critic is

entitled to expect” the following conditions “in every metrical work”:

First, that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of

increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by

the natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements

are formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design

and for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces

of present volition should throughout the metrical language be pro-

portionally discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled

and co- present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an

interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of

voluntary purpose. (2: 65)

Setting aside Coleridge’s dispute with Wordsworth’s preface to

Lyrical Ballads, this reconciliation seems an unremarkable requisite

for poetry, derivative perhaps of Pope’s “the sound must seem an

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