The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

92 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

remarked, “The Platonics of Della Crusca and Laura Maria have been

vilely slandered. Their extacies have been purely poetical, rhapsodical,

and hyperbolical. The Lady’s situation admits of nothing farther!” (4

April 1791). Robinson’s “situation,” ostensibly her married status, is

probably also a crude reference to her paralysis below the waist. Just a

month after the publication of the two poems, even the World, having

lost both Merry and Robinson to Bell, began mocking Della Crusca

and Laura Maria with a series of satirical exchanges between “Terræ-

Filius” and “Lex Talionis” on the comparable merits of the two poets.

Ter r æ - Filius praises Della Crusca (in the past tense) but complains of

“a curs’d tribe” of female offspring: “Your AURAS, / And LAUR A S, /

MARIAS, SOPHIAS”—who “fairly have made me of POETRY sick”; he

concludes, “So still, DELLA CRUSCA, may Fame be THY meed!— / For

the PARENT I love—tho’ a p- x on his BREED!” (7 December 1790).

Matching his opponent’s verse form precisely, Lex Talionis retorts that

“LAUR A MARIA, with fancy and feeling, / By Verse claims the Laurel

APOLLO bestows” but is herself beset by “impotent” imitators who

“From the store of her genius are picking and stealing” (9 December

1790). This is, of course, all an elaborate set up for Terræ- Filius’ ulti-

mate punchline: Smirking obliquely at Robinson’s previous celebrity, at

her heyday of celebrated fashions and ostentatious carriages, and at the

numerous amorous poems addressed to her, Terræ- Filius responds that

Laura is a “dizen’d- out Dame” who seduces young poets and teaches

them to steal for her; the whole exchange leads to this punning conclu-

sion: Laura, who in the eyes of this poet is a mask for Perdita,

sweeps to her coach ’mongst a pickpocket rabble,

And tempts the poor rogues above what they are able.

Thus, BARD, your sweet LAUR A sill keeps up this fun—

For here’s Robbing- Mother, and there’s Robbing- Son. (15 December

1790)

Get it? Terræ- Filius has worked awfully hard to get to this lame rev-

elation of Laura’s identity. Through the winter and into the spring,

the World continued to mock Della Crusca and Laura as the new

poetical couple. One “Barbara Bickerstaff” contributed to the paper

an amusing parody “On the Death of a Fly, Drowned in a Bowl of

Cream,” which is “Humbly Inscribed to Laura Maria, Della Crusca,

Rinaldo, Petrarch, &c” (7 February 1791). The same writer contin-

ued the assault in “To Laura Maria” (23 February 1791) but also

directed the satire, predictably, to the Oracle, mocking the critical

pretensions of editor Boaden and publisher Bell—“the tuneful Critics

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 929780230100251_04_ch02.indd 92 12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM

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

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