The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates I 59

Mark, where amidst her ebon hair,

The scaly Serpents mingling twine,

While darting thro’ th’ infected air,

The murd’rous vapours shine! (13 –8)

The triangulation here is significant because it emphasizes the het-

eroerotic nature of the Della Cruscan exchange and its network.

Robinson participates in a poetics founded on f lirtation and fris-

son—as if Della Crusca were a prize worth fighting over.

Although she goes on to deny an erotic attachment, Laura asks

leave to admire Della Crusca from afar, to “Still gaze with hallow’d

rapture on his fire” (1: 58; 40). In so doing, Robinson proclaims

her allegiance to lyrical continental elegance, praising Della Crusca as

“Tuneful as METASTASSIO’s tongue, / Or glowing PETR ARCH’s witch-

ing Song” (43–4). By citing these two Italian poets, Robinson is

inscribing other poets as part of the network in order to connect her-

self with them and their traditions; she likely also knew that Charlotte

Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets included translations of Petrarch and that

Smith’s third edition of Elegiac Sonnets (1786) added a translation

of “the thirteenth cantata of Metastasio.” She would later publish a

“Sonnet, in the Manner of Metastasio” in the Oracle on 12 November

1793. The reference in particular to Metastasio, the pseudonym of
      Italian librettist and poet Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, dem-
      onstrates that she is as culturally refined as Della Crusca but also
      signals a deeper awareness of Metastasio’s technical virtuosity in the
      writing of parts that required highly skilled sopranos. She means to
      link her avatar, then, not only to Petrarch, to whom her Laura also
      remains committed, but to the pseudonymous performance of for-
      mal proficiency as a means to fame. For Robinson, it is important to
      remember, style is substance.
      Laura’s “To Anna Matilda” closes with the comical correction
      of Anna Matilda’s imputation of Laura as a debauched libertine.
      Referring to the previous poem, she asserts in conclusion,

’Tis not “the Bacchanalian strain”

Can draw the sick’ning soul from pain;

The “brew’d enchantment’s” poison fell!

The mellow grape’s nectarious juice

Suits the base mind—its baneful use

Throws o’er the sense a torpid spell.

But LETHE’s pure and limpid stream,

Wakes the rapt soul, from Passion’s dream,

9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 599780230100251_03_ch01.indd 59 12/31/2010 4:20:16 PM12/31/2010 4:20:16 PM

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

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