The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

206 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

drew her toward such formal innovation and extravagance. In other

words, she cannot merely write a novel and she cannot merely inter-

polate a poem into that novel; each poem has to be a showpiece.^4

“Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogine” certainly was a showpiece

and went on to have a life of its own. Frequently extracted and

reprinted, the poem also was adapted into a play in 1796 and a ballet

in 1797. Narrative poems from popular novels frequently appeared,

and so were read, in completely different and multiple contexts; they

were often meant to stand on their own. Southey, for instance, could

comfortably dismiss The Monk as a work of prose fiction while admir-

ing “Alonzo and Imogine,” which he calls “a poem deservedly popu-

lar,” as well as employing Lewis’s form for his own ballad “Mary

[the Maid of the Inn]” (Poems 162). Moreover, in a letter to Charles

Wynn, Southey mentions that he has composed his poem “The

Ring” in “the Alonzo meter” (Life and Correspondence 102). When

these poems appeared in print, readers could recognize Lewis by

this peculiar poetic form and its metrical effects—a version of poetic

fame that would have been attractive to Robinson as she continually

shaped her own career with greater confidence as a working writer.

The “Alonzo” stanza became so ubiquitous that Lewis himself even

parodied it as “Giles Jollup the Grave and Brown Sally Green” in a

footnote to the poem in later editions of The Monk.

Robinson’s narrative poem “The Doublet of Grey” likewise

employs “the Alonzo meter.” Its appearance in her novel Walsingham

reminded one reviewer, who was otherwise unimpressed with the

book, that “Mrs. R.’s claims to poetic merit are respectable,” add-

ing “we would recommend to her the peculiar cultivation of this

enchanting talent”; the reviewer recognized “The Doublet of Grey”

as “a poem in the measure of Lewis’s Alonzo and Imogene” and

as having “considerable merit” (83). When “The Doublet of Grey”

appeared excerpted in the Morning Post, Stuart prefaced it with the

following headnote:

The following Poem has made as powerful an impression, as the two

preceding Tales of “ALONZO AND IMOGENE,” and “THE MAID OF THE

INN.” In the same stanza, Mr. LEWIS led the way, Mr. SOUTHEY fol-

lowed, and Mrs. ROBINSON, with undiminished effect, proves, that

this return of rhyme is the best of all others suited to the pathos of

Romance. (15 February 1798)

This is how eponymous forms work, establishing a lineage of legiti-

macy: if a later poet succeeds admirably enough in the form, then

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

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