Martin Tupper

Martin Tupper was an English poet and writer best-known (favorably or unfavorably) for his Proverbial Philosopy. Apparently the book achieved, at first, no success either in Great Britian or across the Atlantic in America. However, it soon became something of a sensation in both countries, selling more than 30,000 copies—unparalled at the time. With sections on life, authorship, mystery, yesterday, flame, things, neglect, honesty—to name only a handful—the book takes a swing, often a weak one, at everything under the sun.

Tupper’s unrhymed prose lines bear close resemblance to Whitman’s, and indeed, the two were often compared to each other. Tupper was considered to be Whitman’s precursor with regards to prose poetry, and the latter undoubtedly admired Proverbial Philosopy. Writing in the Brookyln Daily Eagle, he spoke of Tupper as “one of the rare men of the time.” Tupper’s popularity in mass culture was likely another reason, beyond stylistic admiration, why Whitman took notice of the British poet. Additionally, an 1852 edition of Proverbial Philosophy that came out of Boston supposedly had a “fancy red binding with gold-leaf vegetation on the cover and a gilt design on the spine” (Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America) which probably influenced the design of Leaves of Grass three years later.

“Heed not him, but hear his words, and care not whence they come

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Let us walk together as friends in the shaded paths of meditation”

These lines from the prefatory poem in Poverbial Philosopy, elaborating on the role of the poet, strike me as sounding very close to Whitman’s notion of the role of the poet.