Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/39

 notoriety, and the references to her royal lover in her verse contributed greatly to its popularity. She was to be seen daily in an absurd chariot, with a device of a basket likely to be taken for a coronet, driven by the favoured of the day, with her husband and candidates for her favour as outriders. ‘To-day she was a paysanne, with her straw hat tied at the back of her head, looking as if too new to what she passed to know what she looked at. Yesterday she perhaps had been the dressed belle of Hyde Park, trimmed, powdered, patched, painted to the utmost power of rouge and white lead. To-morrow she would be the cravatted Amazon of the riding-house; but be she what she might, the hats of the fashionable promenaders swept the ground as she passed’ (, Memoirs, ii. 24). A companion picture shows her at a later date seated, helplessly paralysed, in one of the waiting-rooms of the opera-house, ‘a woman of fashionable appearance, still beautiful, but not in the bloom of beauty's pride. In a few minutes her liveried servants came to her,’ and after covering their arms with long white sleeves, ‘lifted her up and conveyed her to her carriage’ (ib. p. 34). As an author she was credited in her own day with feeling, taste, and elegance, and was called the English Sappho. Some of her songs, notably ‘Bounding Billow, cease thy motion,’ ‘Lines to him who will understand them,’ and ‘The Haunted Beach,’ enjoyed much popularity in the drawing-room; but though her verse has a certain measure of facility, it appears, to modern tastes, jejune, affected, and inept. Wolcot (Peter Pindar) and others belauded her in verse, celebrating her graces, which were real, and her talents, which were imaginary.

Many portraits of Mary Robinson are in existence. Sir Joshua painted her twice, one portrait being now in the possession of Lord Granville, and another in that of Lady Wallace. He ‘probably used her as model in some of his fancy pictures, for she sat to him very assiduously throughout the year’ (1782) ( and, Life of Reynolds, ii. 343). The Garrick Club collection has a portrait after Sir Joshua Reynolds, and one by Zoffany, as Rosalind. A portrait, engraved by J. R. Smith, was painted by Romney. Another is in Huish's ‘Life of George IV.’ A full-length portrait of her in undress, sitting by a bath, was painted by Stroehling. Two portraits were painted by Cosway, and one by Dance. A portrait by Hoppner was No. 249 in the Guelph Exhibition. A half-length by Gainsborough was exhibited in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1868. Engraved portraits are in the various editions of her life. In his ‘Book for a Rainy Day,’ J. T. Smith tells how, when attending on the visitors in Sherwin's chambers, he received a kiss from her as the reward for fetching a drawing of her which Sherwin had made.

[The chief if not always trustworthy authority for the life of Mrs. Robinson is her posthumous memoirs published by her daughter. Letters from Perdita to a certain Israelite and her Answer to them, London, 1781, 8vo, is a coarse satire accusing her and her husband of swindling. Even coarser is Poetical Epistles from Florizel to Perdita ——, and Perdita's Answer, &c., London, 1781, 4to, and Mistress of Royalty, or the Loves of Florizel and Perdita, n. d. (Brit. Mus. Cat. s.v. ‘Perdita’). Other books consulted are the Life of Reynolds by Leslie and Taylor; Memoirs of her by Miss Hawkins; Genest's Account of the Stage; Monthly Mirror; Walpole Correspondence, ed. Cunningham; Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe; Allibone's Dictionary; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters; Georgian Era; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Biographia Dramatica; Thespian Dictionary; John Taylor's Records of my Life; Gent. Mag. 1804, ii. 1009; Literary Memoirs of Living Authors, 1798; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. iii. 173, 348, iv. 105, 5th ser. ix. 59, 7th ser. vi. 147.] 

ROBINSON, MARY {fl. 1802), ‘Mary of Buttermere.’ [See under .]

ROBINSON, MATTHEW (1628–1694), divine and physician, baptised at Rokeby, Yorkshire, on 14 Dec. 1628, was the third son of Thomas Robinson, barrister, of Gray's Inn, and Frances, daughter of Leonard Smelt, of Kirby Fletham, Yorkshire. When, in 1643, his father was killed fighting for the parliament in the civil war, Matthew was recommended as page to Sir Thomas Fairfax. But it was decided that he should continue his education; and in October 1644 he arrived at Edinburgh. In the spring the plague broke out, and he left. In May 1645 he made his way to Cambridge, which he reached, after some hairbreadth escapes, on 9 June. A few days after he began his studies Cambridge was threatened by the royalists. He and a companion, while trying to escape to Ely, were brought back by ‘the rude rabble.’ Robinson now offered his services to the governor of the town, and until the dispersal of the king's forces undertook military duty every night.

On 4 Nov. he was admitted scholar of St. John's College. His tutor, Zachary Cawdry [q. v.], became his lifelong friend. Robinson excelled in metaphysics, and for recreation translated, but did not publish, the ‘Book of Canticles’ into Latin verse. He graduated B.A. in 1648 and M.A. in 1652. In 1649 he was elected a fellow of Christ's College, but