248 NotesAdams treats him more favorably and more comprehensively. More
recently, Mee provides an overview of Merry’s move from polite
sociability to radical politics. Wood, without using the phrase
“Della Crusca” at all, discusses Merry’s radical and satirical pam-
phlet Signor Pittachio, which portrays Pitt as a quack medicine-
show performer (82–5).- Maxwell was an arms dealer who intended, along with Tooke, to
provide weapons to France after the Duke of Brunswick’s intimidat-
ing manifesto warning the French people of dire consequences if the
Royal Family were harmed (Barrell, Imagining 224). - Clark, in his book on Gifford, wrongly presumes Bell to be the actual
author of this poem (53); Gifford pairs it with a sonnet attacking him
that did appear in the Gentleman’s Magazine (62 [August 1792]:
748–9); but the sonnet supposedly by Bell is a parody of the previ-
ous sonnet as well as of Bell’s intellectual pretentions, which Gifford
mocks throughout. - Robinson’s treatment of Marie Antoinette’s Revolutionary travails
as well as her brief personal acquaintance with the Queen is a sub-
ject of great interest. It features in the biographies naturally, but has
been explored in greater detail than I am able to do here by Pascoe
(Romantic Theatricality 117–29), Craciun (Fatal Women 76 –109),
and Garnai (82–95). See also Binhammer and Conaster. The Memoirs
contains an account of Robinson’s encounter with Marie Antoinette
(7: 268–9). - Werkmeister notes that the Telegraph included Robinson in a list of
public figures who paid for newspaper puffs; the list also included the
Prince, his illegal wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Pitt (Newspaper 20). - Bysshe did not deny accent in English poetry, but he did not recom-
mend that stressed and unstressed syllables be configured on the clas-
sical models for long and short syllables in Greek and Latin. Bradford
shows that the popularized notion of syllabics as deriving from Bysshe
is a misreading of the complexity of his theory (53–6). Still, it is evident
to me that Robinson’s practice in her earlier irregular odes is syllabic;
her familiarity with French poetry would have justified her practice. - Trey Conatser considers this poem among several other contempo-
rary poems about Marie Antoinette. - I n a d d it i o n to M it c h e l l’s b i o g r a ph y o f F ox , I a m i n d eb t e d to M it c h e l l’s
Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782–
1794 , to E. A. Smith’s Whig Principles and Party Politics, and to
David Wilkinson’s more recent The Duke of Portland: Politics and
Party in the Age of George III. - See Craciun (Fatal 76–109) and Garnai (90–5).
- See Craciun (British 82); Craciun identifies the addressee of the above
letter as Jane Taylor (198n), but it must be John Taylor—especially
since, in it, Robinson calls him “Juan” (7: 305).
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10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13