A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Robinson, (Mary)
Left under the care of her mother, the latter, to secure her from the dangers her great beauty made to be feared, at the age of fifteen, indiscreetly married her to Mr. Robinson, a young Templar, from whom, after a few years, she was separated. Her first introduction to public notice and admiration, as an actress, was under the immediate auspices and indefatigable instruction of Mr. Garrick, in the year 1777. Here her beauty was universally spoken of as a phenomenon. Her air, her step, her carriage, had a lightness, an airiness, and a grace, which, especially assisted as they were by the excellence of her understanding, and the playfulness of her imagination, almost every one who saw her admired.
Having been induced, after a very short experiment of the theatrical life, by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, to quit the stage, her genius soon opened to itself a new career. She became a poet; and few writers of her own day are confessed to have courted the Muses more successfully. Her poem of Sight, in particular, and her Stanzas, written between Dover and Calais (Vide Poems by Mrs. Robinson, in 2 vols. 8 vo.), would do honour to the pen of almost any English poet of the present century. The ease with which she poured forth her unpremeditated verse was none of its least extraordinary features. Some of these have lately been collected into a little volume, under the title of Lyric Tales.
The elegancies of her house, and the charms of her conversation, were for many years the magnet that drew around her a continual resort of those persons who were most distinguished in art, or brilliant in genius, in the times in which she flourished.
For the last twelve or thirteen years, she was the martyr of a severe and incurable rheumatism, in consequence of which she became a cripple. Almost all her prose literary compositions were the offspring of this period.
The latter years of her life were darkened by the embarrassment, of her circumstances; much of this was occasioned by her inconsiderate involving herself for the convenience of others. In 1778 she commenced her literary career by a musical farce, called the Lucky Escape, which was followed by Captivity, a poem; Ainsi va la Monde, a poem; Monodies to the Memory of the Queen of France, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; Sappho and Phaon, in a series of Legitimate Sonnets; Modern Manners; Poems, in two volumes; The Sicilian Lover, a tragedy; Vancenza, a romance; The Widow, and Angelina, novels; Herbert de Sevrac, a romance of the present century; Walsingham; The Natural Daughter; and The False Friends, novels. Several popular Pamphlets and Poems, under the signatures of Louisa, Maria, Julia, Laura, Oberon, &c. Mrs. Robinson was undoubtedly a woman of great abilities, and mistress of a most splendid poetical imagination; but some of her novels betray signs of haste and undigested thought, and her judgement seems to have preferred feelings to justice in her morality; yet there are many noble sentiments to be found there, as well as in her muse, which was melancholy, tender, and harmonious. Her life has lately been published, begun by herself, and concluded by her daughter, a young lady of great beauty, who wrote also The Shrine of Bertha.