Robinson Lyrical Tales Reviews

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

Robinson, Mary

Lyrical Tales. London: Longman and Co., 1800.

Contemporary Reviews

Monthly Review 36 (September 1801): 26-30.

ART. III. Lyrical Tales. By Mrs. Mary Robinson. Crown 8 vo. Pp. 218. 5s. Boards. Longman and Col 1800.

IN order to excel in lyric poetry, a happy combination of genius and taste must be formed; since this kind of composition ought not only to display a considerable degree of dignity and elevation, but also those charms and subordinate graces which we admire in the most finished literary productions. Mrs. Robinson, then, may be said to have made a bold attempt; and the critic will not take up this volume with the expectation of finding her completely successful. Her lyre, however, is harmonious, and she has displayed the power of touching the chords with pathos. As her life, though in some periods gay and dazzling, was deeply tinctured with sorrow, her muse is of the somber cast; and though, being desirous of giving variety to her tales, she sometimes endeavours to be sprightly, her efforts are evidently forced, and she soon relapses into the dark and fearful region of tragical invention. She takes her harp from the willow on which it hung, to attune it to sounds of woe, to harrow up the soul, and to impress on the imagination the melancholy truth that human life is indeed a vale of tears. If she described it as she found it, we must not only forgive her, but lament her unfortunate destiny; yet we do not recommend it to our readers to cherish those gloomy representations of our present state, which the wounded mind feels a satisfaction in delineating.