The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

156 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

as 350 copies per day when he purchased it; four years later, Stuart

was selling “upwards of 2,000” papers a day (“Newspaper” 579). By

the time Stuart sold it in 1803 for many times the amount he paid

for it, the Morning Post had helped launch not only Southey’s and

Coleridge’s careers but Wordsworth’s as well.

The Morning Post printed more poems by Robinson than did

any other paper. Most of these appeared after August of 1799, when

she replaced Southey as the paper’s chief poetry contributor, until

November of 1800, when she became fatally ill. During those final

fifteen months, Robinson revived her most prominent avatars; and,

like Southey before her, Robinson produced or otherwise procured

approximately two poems a week for Stuart—a rigorous program for

any poet. She began in January of 1795 with Portia, an avatar that

vanished after only a month.

Portia Pseudonymously

In 1736, Anne Ingram, Viscountess Howard anonymously pub-

lished a poetic riposte to Alexander Pope’s misogynistic “On the

Characters of Women.” Understandably mistaking Ingram for Lady

Mary Wortley Montagu, Robinson admired the poem and quoted

it at length in her 1799 Letter to the Women of England (8: 148–9).

Although her “Portia” pseudonym certainly plays on both charac-

ters by that name in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and The Merchant of

Ve nice, Ingram’s acclamation of the historical Portia, wife of Brutus,

captures most precisely the significance of the name for the series

of four poems that constitute Robinson’s first contributions to the

Morning Post. Robinson’s quotation of Ingram’s poem concludes:

PORTIA, the glory of the female race;

PORTIA, more lovely in her mind than face;

Early inform’d by Tr ut h ’s unerring beam,

What to reject, what justly to esteem.

Taught by Philosophy, all moral good;

How to repel, in youth, th’ impetuous blood:

How ev’ry darling passion to subdue;

And Fame, through Reason’s avenues, pursue.

Of Cato born; to noble Brutus join’d;

Supreme in beauty, with a ROMAN MIND! (8: 149)

These are the virtues that, as we have seen, Robinson’s Sappho rejects

at her peril but that Robinson’s sonnet sequence ultimately espouses.

The rational Portia is a counterpoint to the hysterical Sappho.

9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1569780230100251_06_ch04.indd 156 12/28/2010 11:08:49 AM12/28/2010 11:08:49 AM

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