90 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonand Milton preeminently, but also working circuitously through “the
sacred few, / Pope, Dryden, Spenser, all that Fame shall raise, / From
Chaucer’s gloom—till Merry’s lucid days” (1: 80; 123–5). Robinson
adds, “Then emulation kindles fancy’s fire, / The glorious throng
poetic flights inspire” (126–7). This allegory of the poet’s calling
pertains only to “the lib’ral few” (136), those open- minded enough
to receive such inspiration, turning again to Merry whose “transcen-
dent fire” (163) has inspired her own muse.
The poetic muse is exclusive obviously to those who can appreciate
genius; so, having established this, the poem turns to a more egalitar-
ian muse, “Celestial Freedom” (1: 81; 165). In lines 164–91, Robinson
develops an allegory of epistemology in which the enlightened, liber-
ated mind can come to no other conclusion than the superiority of
freedom over any other claim. “ ’Tis god- like Freedom,” she writes,
“bids each passion live, / That truth may boast, or patriot virtue give”
(178–9). This freedom is essential, for it “Gives strength to Reason,”
justifying an egalitarian spirit that “Strangles each tyrant phantom in
its birth” (187, 190). Here, she semantically disconnects the rhyming
pair for rhetorical effect: this kind of “birth”—hereditary power—is
no equal to the “superior worth” of freedom and equality that “knows
no title” (191). In a long section of the poem, after having espoused
this principle, Robinson surveys French history since Louis XIV to
show the progress of “Enlighten’d Gallia” (1: 81–3; 192–275). This
survey culminates in the inevitable figure of French tyranny and a
remarkable conf lation of Spenserian and Dantean allegorical tropes:
“Thy Tyrants, Gallia, nurs’d the witch Despair, / Where in her black
Bastile [sic] the harpy fed / On the warm crimson drops her fangs
had shed” (237–9). Amid this extravagant personification, however,
Robinson does not shy away from using the Revolutionaries’ phrase
that, in English, would become a touchstone for radical thought for
the rest of the decade: the Bastille commemorates “the hour / That
gave the rights of man to rav’nous pow’r” (258–9). Robinson goes
on to praise the French Third Estate as “the favour’d delegates of
Heav’n” (276) and, echoing Price, asks bluntly, “Who shall the nat’ral
Rights of Man deride, / When Freedom spreads her fost’ring banners
wide?” (298–9). It is this concept of natural rights that Burke calls
into question so rigorously in his Reflections.
At a time when many Britons assumed the French Revolution
would resolve itself as a constitutional monarchy on the English
model, which is what Fox, for example, assumed would happen,
Robinson and Merry were pushing the debate further by heralding
the more progressive examples of the recently ratified American9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 909780230100251_04_ch02.indd 90 12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13