The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

72 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

will spur some “chosen swain” to “rise above the rhyming throng” of

contemporary poets and restore England to its former literary great-

ness, Warton clearly prescribes a cure for the age’s poetic ills, which

he considers as resulting from too much didacticism in poetry. Warton

wants a poet who will write verse of passion and inspiration, who will

“O’erwhelm our souls with joy and pain” and will “With native beauties

win applause, / Beyond cold critics’ studied laws.” Warton writes in his

preface to the 1746 Odes that he considers “Invention and Imagination

to be the chief faculties of a Poet” and hopes that his odes “may be

look’d upon as an attempt to bring back Poetry into its right chan-

nel.” Similarly, in her preface to Collins’s Poetical Works (1797), A nna

Letitia Barbauld defines lyric poetry as “pure Poetry, or Poetry in the

abstract,” in which “the conceptions of the Poet (often highly meta-

physical) are rendered still more remote from common apprehension by

the figurative phrase in which they are clothed” (iv–v). Barbauld adds

that lyric poetry “depends for effect on the harmony of the verse, which

must be modulated with the nicest care; and on a felicity of expression,

rather than a fullness of thought” (v). This is as good an explanation

of the lyrical elegance Robinson was aiming for as any from the period.

Although Warton and Collins wrote their odes around mid- century

(both published their volumes in 1746), Barbauld’s commentary and

Robinson’s practice demonstrate the currency that this type of poetry

maintained at the end of the century. Robinson’s early contributions to

the Oracle as Laura Maria, moreover, show that she has heeded Warton’s

call for poetry to demonstrate invention and imagination, form and

fancy. Warton’s odes also feature a Laura who is the erotic object of the

speaker’s fancy; as with Petrarch’s Laura, Robinson’s variation on her

own name “Maria” modifies as it alludes to Warton’s Laura, making

her the lyrical subject as well as the authorial odist.

Robinson’s odes are almost always associated with the Laura Maria

avatar. Her first Laura Maria poem appeared on 24 June 1789 as

“Lines on Beauty” with the following headnote, presumably written

by Bell, as a comment on the paper’s new poetical correspondents:

Whilst we can boast the female Correspondence of an ADELAIDE, an

EDWIN, LAUR A MARIA, SAPPHO, and others, we shall not be Jealous of

the admired talents of DELLA CRUSCA, or ANNA MATILDA: in proof of

which we give the following very elegant Specimen.

Obviously, Bell’s puff is marketing, but also serves to remind readers of

the heyday of the World and to promise more “elegant” poetry in the

Oracle.^6 She would greatly expand the poem as “Ode to Beauty” for

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 729780230100251_04_ch02.indd 72 12/28/2010 11:08:27 AM12/28/2010 11:08:27 AM

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

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