The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

The English Sappho 149

contends, is bound up with “gaudy buds and wounding thorns”; that

is, factitious pleasure and inevitable disappointment (8). Still, the

poem concludes with an epitome that surpasses the archetypal “poet-

ess”; that is, the poet Robinson herself and her assertion of ascen-

dancy above the material provided to her not only by Ovid’s text, but

by the problematical example of Sappho’s fame. Finally, Robinson’s

Sappho is the public image of herself that she must publicly renounce.

For Robinson, the claim to poetic fame involves more than virtuoso

performances—although that is a large part of it—but a profession

of virtue itself. The final sestet of Sappho and Phaon is an invocation,

but not to the muse:

O! Sky- born VIRTUE! sacred is thy name!

And though mysterious Fate, with frown severe,

Oft decorates thy brows with wreaths of Fame,

Bespangled o’er with sorrow’s chilling tear!

Yet shalt thou more than mortal raptures claim,

The brightest planet of th’ ETHERNAL SPHERE! (1: 345; 9–14)

Robinson clings not only to the image of the “wreath of Fame” as

a poetic trope, but also to the very phrase itself as a mantra, as if its

repeated utterance could ensure her immortality. But here she claims

it merely as an adjunct of virtue. Robinson clearly demonstrates the

formal rigor of her performance, but the discipline required of her

in the composition of Sappho and Phaon is also more than a little

penitential. Her final assessment of Sappho—at least of the poet-

character—is not, therefore, favorable. The Greek Sappho gave up

everything for “mortal raptures.” The English Sappho, hampered as

she had been by the Perdita epithet, here seeks something more.

On 17 October 1796, just as Sappho and Phaon went on sale,

Boaden printed in the Oracle an attempt to rehabilitate the Perdita

epithet on behalf of Robinson—if she did not write the puff herself:

Those who through ignorance suppose, that they stigmatize Mrs.

ROBINSON when they call her The Perditta, are not aware that she

acquired the name, by the eclat with which she performed one of the

most AMIABLE characters that SHAKESPEARE ever wrote. Mrs. SIDDONS

or Miss FARREN would not blush at being called the Hermione or

the Lady Teazle; and Mrs. ROBINSON ought to feel proud when her

Perditta is remembered. (17 October 1796)

This item may be little more than public relations because every-

one reading the column would remember exactly who Florizel was

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1499780230100251_05_ch03.indd 149 12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM

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

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