The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates I 161

who have partisan tastes for particular news providers, were liable

to engage only those ideas with which they already agreed, and she

played to that impulse.

Robinson’s move to the Morning Post shows that she sought affilia-

tion with a professional network with which her poetry would be more

compatible or that she wrote poetry that was more compatible with the

professional network with which she now worked. In either case, the

poetry is different. As Adriana Craciun has pointed out, Portia’s “St.

James’s Street” has an important relationship with Robinson’s previ-

ously published “Ode for the 18th of January, 1794” (British 66–9).

Both poems allude to the Queen’s birthday and criticize all such opu-

lent royal festivities during a period of war and widespread poverty.

The earlier poem, which Robinson published in the Oracle under

her own name, draws attention to the plight of the poor and to the

fruitless violence of war, admitting of the power of poetic “Fancy” to

“descry / The woe which PLEASURE’S TRIBE ne’er saw!” (1: 299; 41–2).

She imputes to herself the peculiar authority of the poet as seer and

prophet, and concludes with a prayer for renewed prosperity at home

and peace abroad. Although correct in its assessment of Robinson’s

politics, Craciun’s reading overlooks the fact that the ode appeared in

a ministerial paper, the Oracle, and that it was prefaced with a head-

note that commends the poem for its homostrophic regularity—each

10- line stanza is ababccdd 8 e 10 e 12 —but denounces its political import

as the product of a “venal Muse” (18 January 1794). Sarcastically dub-

bing the poet as “a Daughter of Liberty,” the headnote is an apology

for printing what it presents as a mercenary tirade against the monar-

chy intended to capitalize on factious populist views. Indeed, the col-

umn directly to the right of Robinson’s ode, also headed “The Queen’s

Birthday,” takes the printing of this poem as an opportunity to con-

demn such populist “torrents of obloquy” directed against “the con-

ditions of SOVER EIGNS.” Denouncing such opinions as “ingratitude”

and “folly” and their propagators as “malignant” and “enthusiastic,”

the Oracle columnist praises the worth and benevolence of the British

monarchy and even suggests that the “unhappy ANTOINETTE” would

be alive if she had followed the example of “the true feminine policy

of the BRITISH QUEEN” and “had kept herself aloof from all politi-

cal intrigue,” which he notes is really the proper concern of the King.

The column concludes with the hope that Queen Charlotte “may long

continue to adorn the station to which her virtues and her serenity of

temper give her so fair a claim,” adding that such a wish “must be the

prayer of every sincere lover of the BRITISH CONSTITUTION!” “Ode for

the 18th of January, 1794” would be one of the last poems Robinson

9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1619780230100251_06_ch04.indd 161 12/28/2010 11:08:49 AM12/28/2010 11:08:49 AM

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