Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/739

Rh 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