The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

690 By human crimes, he still acutely felt For human misery.

Wandering on the beach, He learn'd to augur from the clouds of heaven, And from the changing colours of the sea, And sullen murmurs of the hollow cliffs,

695 Or the dark porpoises,3 that near the shore Gambol'd and sported on the level brine When tempests were approaching: then at night He listen'd to the wind; and as it drove The billows with o'erwhelming vehemence

7oo He, starting from his rugged couch, went forth And hazarding a life, too valueless, He waded thro' the waves, with plank or pole Towards where the mariner in conflict dread Was buffeting for life the roaring surge;

705 And now just seen, now lost in foaming gulphs, The dismal gleaming of the clouded moon Shew'd the dire peril. Often he had snatch'd From the wild billows, some unhappy man Who liv'd to bless the hermit of the rocks.

710 But if his generous cares were all in vain, And with slow swell the tide of morning bore Some blue swol'n cor'se� to land; the pale recluse corpse Dug in the chalk a sepulchre�above Where the dank sea-wrack0 mark'd the utmost tide, refuse from the sea

1. In a cavern almost immediately under the cliff called Beachy Head, there lived, as the people of the country believed, a man of the name of Darby, who for many years had no other abode than this cave, and subsisted almost entirely on shell-fish. He had often administered assistance to shipwrecked mariners; but venturing into the sea on this charitable mission during a violent equinoctial storm, he himself perished. As it is above thirty years since I heard this tradition of Parson Darby (for so I think he was called): it may now perhaps be forgotten [Smith's note].

2. Sometimes in thick weather the sheep feeding on the summit of the cliff, miss their footing, and are killed by the fall [Smith's note]. 3. Dark porpoises. Del-phimts phoccena [Smith's note].

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66 / MARY ROBINSON

715 And with his prayers perform'd the obsequies For the poor helpless stranger.

One dark night The equinoctial wind blew south by west, Fierce on the shore;�the bellowing cliffs were shook Even to their stony base, and fragments fell

720 Flashing and thundering on the angry flood. At day-break, anxious for the lonely man, His cave the mountain shepherds visited, Tho' sand and banks of weeds had choak'd their way. � He was not in it; but his drowned cor'se

725 By the waves wafted, near his former home Receiv'd the rites of burial. Those who read Chisel'd within the rock, these mournful lines, Memorials of his sufferings, did not grieve, That dying in the cause of charity

730 His spirit, from its earthly bondage freed, Had to some better region fled for ever.

1806 1807

MARY ROBINSON 1 757?�1800

Mary Robinson, whom the Dictionary of National Biography, at the beginning of a long entry, describes as "actress, author, and mistress of George, Prince of Wales," lived a more sensational life than any other poet of the period, Byron and Shelley included. Her father was a Bristol whaler, her mother a woman of "genteel background" who, after her husband deserted the family, ran a school for girls. At fifteen Mary was married to Thomas Robinson, an articled law clerk who seemed a good match but quickly proved a gambler and libertine; he was arrested for debt, and Mary and her infant daughter spent a year with him in debtors' prison, where, to pass the time, she began writing poetry. Her first pieces appeared in a two-volume Poems published under the patronage of the duchess of Devonshire in 1775.

In December 1776, accepting a long-standing invitation of David Garrick, the actor-manager of the Drury Lane theater, Robinson made her stage debut as Juliet, and for the next four years she was constantly before the public�in thirty or more principal roles, nine of them in plays by Shakespeare. A beauty and leader of fashion, she attracted many suitors and was painted by many of the leading portraitists of the day, including George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy. At a command performance of The Winter's Tale in December 1779, playing the role of Perdita, Robinson captivated the teenaged prince of Wales and, after negotiating financial compensation in the form of a .20,000 bond (because she would have to give up her acting career), became his mistress. As a royal mistress, she was even more exposed to the public eye than she had been on the stage; years after the prince abandoned her, ribald speculation about the erotic adventures of "Perdita" continued to engross gossip columnists and satiric cartoonists. Robin- son's attempt, following the prince's desertion, to sue for the promised .20,000 failed, but through the efforts of the Whig parliamentarian Charles James Fox, another

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