Born, in London, 17 July 1810. Early education at Charterhouse School. Matric. Ch. Ch., Oxford, 21 May 1828; B.A., 1832; M.A., 1835; D.C.L., 1847. Student of Lincoln’s Inn, 18 Jan. 1832; called to Bar, 24 Nov. 1835. Married Isabella Devis, 26 Nov. 1835. F.R.S., 1845. Visited America, 1851, and 1876. Resided greater part of life at Albury House, near Guildford. Died there, 29 Nov. 1889. Works: “Poems” (anon.), 1832; “Proverbial Philosophy,” 1838; 2nd series, 1842; 3rd series, 1867; series 1–4, 1871; “Geraldine,” 1838; “A Modern Pyramid,” 1839; “An Author’s Mind,” 1841; “St. Martha’s” (priv. ptd.), 1841; “The Crock of Gold,” 1844; “Heart,” 1844; “The Twins,” 1844; “A Thousand Lines” (anon.), 1845; “Probabilities” (anon.), 1847; “Hactenus,” 1848; “Surrey,” 1849; “Ballads for the Times” [1850]; “Farley Heath,” 1850; “King Alfred’s Poems in English Metres,” 1851; “Half a Dozen No Popery Ballads” [1851]; “Hymns for All Nations,” 1851; “St. Martha’s” (with J. Tudor), 1851; “Dirge for Wellington,” 1852; “Half-a-Dozen Ballads for Australian Emigrants,” 1853; “A Batch of War Ballads,” 1854; “A Dozen Ballads for the Times” (anon.), 1854; “Lyrics of the Heart and Mind,” 1855; “Paterfamilias’s Diary of Everybody’s Tour” (anon.), 1856; “Rides and Reveries of the late Mr. Æsop Smith” (anon.), 1858 [1857]; “Stephen Langton,” 1858; “Some Verse and Prose about National Rifle Clubs,” 1858; “Alfred” (priv. ptd.), 1858; “Three Hundred Sonnets,” 1860; “Our Greeting to the Princess Alexandra,” 1863; “Ode for the 300th Birthday of Shakespeare,” 1864; “Plan of the Ritualistic Campaign” (priv. ptd.), [1865]; “Selections … Together with some Poems never before published,” 1866; “Raleigh,” 1866; “Tupper’s Directorium,” 1868; “Our Canadian Dominion,” 1868; “Twenty-one Protestant Ballads” (from “The Rock”), 1868; “A Creed and Hymns,” 1870; “Fifty Protestant Ballads,” 1874; “Washington,” 1876; “Three Five-Act Plays, and Twelve Dramatic Scenes,” 1882; “Jubilate” [1886]; “My Life as an Author,” 1886. He edited: W. G. Tupper’s “Out and Home,” 1856.

Personal

  Met the author of “Proverbial Philosophy,” and heard him expatiate on the beautiful scene before him, and not in hexameters. He is a happy, little, blue-eyed man, who evidently enjoys talking, but does not approach the dignity of his didactic poem.

  For the matter, then, of autobiography, I decline its higher and its deeper aspects; as also I wish not to obtrude on the public eye mere domesticities and privacies of life. But mainly lest others less acquainted with the petty incidents of my career should hereafter take up the task, I accede with all frankness and humility to what seems to me like a present call to duty, having little time to spare at seventy-six, so near the end of my tether,—and protesting, as I well may, against the charge of selfish egotism in a book necessarily spotted on every page with the insignificant letter I; and while, of course on human-nature principles, willing enough to exhibit myself at the best, promising also not to hide the second best, or worse than that, where I can perceive it.

  Some of us may decline to accept Mr. Tupper’s evident estimate of the poetical and intellectual value of his work; but the general verdict upon the man will be that he is a good fellow. He hints as much himself, for he says with a charming naïveté—“If I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse than I hope I am.” And though he also says very truly that it is only in human nature to be willing to exhibit itself at the best, still human nature, when it is garrulous, is apt unconsciously to give us a poet at the worst also; so, as Mr. Tupper’s worst, so far as it can be discerned in these pages, is a very harmless egotism—not in the least aggressive—his self-characterisation is probably not far wrong.

  The “Autobiography” he has just published is very full of his ever-prominent and harmless egotism. Some of it is interesting. He can hardly be blamed for remembering that when he was at Christ Church, Oxford, he “had the honor of being prize-taker of Dr. Burton’s theological essay, ‘The Reconciliation of Matthew and John,’ when Gladstone, who had also contested it, stood second;” “and when Dr. Burton,” he says, “had me before him to give me the £25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone to have £5 worth of them, as he was so good a second.”

  When I knew him he was of a cheerful and agreeable presence, fond of reading his own poetry and telling his own life; and with his ruddy face and white beard he reminded me always of an English Santa Claus.

  I would rather have written “Proverbial Philosophy”—though I never admired more than two lines in it—than have shared in the common baseness of incessantly heaping insult on a defenseless and amiable man, who, like the rest of us, may have had his foibles, but who had done his little best in life.

  Among successful authors who dealt with Hatchard, Martin Tupper must not be altogether omitted, for Tupper’s books had an enormous, though, if merit be considered, a most unaccountable sale. Rickerby, a printer in the City, had produced the first series of “Proverbial Philosophy” in 1838, but as Rickerby was more a printer than a publisher, Tupper sought a better-known man, and for the second series of the book and many subsequent editions he had dealings with Hatchard, receiving annually as he himself tells us, 500l to 800l a-year, “and in the aggregate having benefited both them and myself—for we shared equally—by something like 10,000l a-piece,” Tupper seems to have got on very well with both John Hatchard and his son Thomas; but when they were dead his lines seem not to have fallen in such pleasant places, and a little quarrel, such as publisher and authors had in the past, and still engage in, ensued. Tupper withdrew his books from the house to Moxon. The fact was that Tupper thought that by going to Moxon his pedestrian lines might break into a trot if placed in Moxon’s Catalogue beside those of Alfred Tennyson, for whom he was then publishing. Tupper, as is pretty well known, could not—or would not—disguise his love of praise and his inability to brook any adverse criticism.

  Whom I might have passed as a most respectable grocer and possible church warden.

Proverbial Philosophy, 1838–71

  Tupper and his “Proverbial Philosophy” are old familiar acquaintance of mine. There is good stuff in the book, but it strikes me as too wordy and inflated in its diction; and is of a nondescript class in literature—neither prose nor poetry.

  Mr. Tupper is one of a class whom we may call the commonplace eccentrics. They write both in verse and prose, but it is in verse that their peculiarities are most fully exhibited. If they essayed to write as other people write, they would attract no notice;—by writing strangely, they obtain attention,—as a man whose head is fit for nothing else, may still collect a crowd by standing on it…. Probably Mr. Tupper’s most distinguished talent is a certain judicious knowingness which enables him to turn his labours to good pecuniary account. So, at least, it would appear from an advertisement at the end of his “eighteenth edition,” where a French version of it is “highly recommended for schools in conjunction with the English edition!” Mr. Tupper in the frenzies of his inspiration, has still, it seems, an eye to the oven; and mounts the tripod to heave in coals at the kitchen-window!

  Did you see Hannay’s pill for M. F. Tupper in the Athenæum?

  It was unwontedly popular; and Tupper’s name was on every tongue. Suddenly, the world reversed its decision and discarded its favorite; so that, without having done anything to warrant the desertion, Tupper finds himself with but very few admirers, or even readers: so capricious is the vox populi. The poetry is not without merit; but the world cannot forgive itself for having rated it too high.

  “Proverbial Philosophy” remains as one of the bright and shining examples of the absolute want of connection between literary merit and popular success.

  Mr. Tupper could, and did, occasionally, acquit himself respectably as a writer of ballads and other kinds of minor verse, but it was not to these he owed his popularity. This was due to the extraordinary collection of rhymeless and, indeed, rhythmless platitudes which he published under the name of “Proverbial Philosophy,” which was eagerly taken up by the public, and was in immense demand as a “giftbook” for a long series of years. There were those, indeed, who declared, and not wholly in an ironical spirit, that its purely material and external attractions, its conveniences in shape and size, combined with the unimpeachable propriety of its contents—that these and not any popular delusion as to its literary merits were the operative causes of its truly astonishing, and its yet more astonishingly prolonged vogue…. The vast and steady popularity of the author of “Proverbial Philosophy” during the greater part, if not the whole, of Tennyson’s prime, and, still more, the unquestionably immense numerical preponderance of the poetaster’s public over the poet’s, is one of the most singular phenomena of that literary era.

General

  Our wonder is, how, with his feeling of the beauty of “Christabel,” he could have so blurred and marred it in his unfortunate sequel.

  Martin Tupper, a singularly good-natured man, though I cannot read his books.

  In spite of the popular theory, that nothing is so fallacious as circumstantial evidence, there is no man of observation who would not deem it more trustworthy than any human testimony, however honest, which was made up from personal recollection. The actors in great affairs are seldom to be depended on as witnesses either to the order of events or their bearing upon results; for even where selfish interest is not to be taken into account, the mythic instinct ere long begins to shape things as they ought to have been, rather than as they were. This is true even of subjects in which we have no personal interest, and not only do no two men describe the same street-scene in the same way, but the same man, unless prosaic to a degree below the freezing-point of Tupper, will never do it twice in the same way.

  Nearly every review, magazine, and critical journal, published in his time, had its say about this famous writer, but his friends have certainly outnumbered his enemies, and have carried the day. The motive which prompted his “Proverbial Philosophy” was creditable and Christian-like; it was not equal to Shakespeare, nor did it aspire to such a position; it carried pure and comforting thoughts into thousands of domestic circles, without leaving behind it the poisonous slime which emanates from the popular or fashionable press; and I have thought that I would much prefer to be shut up from the world with that curious book than with a thousand and one of the novels and scientific dissertations which flood the bookstalls and libraries of the present day.

  It is difficult to know how to characterize Martin Tupper, whose strange productions have perhaps called forth more ridicule and sold more copies than those of all the rest of our poets put together. His “Proverbial Philosophy” was the most remarkable instance we know of a large assumption, which so imposed for a time upon the rank and file of readers that he was taken on his own estimate as a poet. The tamest and most commonplace sentiment and platitudes, in the form of dull aphorisms, filling a succession of large and dreary volumes, are the last things we should think of as likely to attract the enthusiasm of the crowd—yet they did so in the most astonishing way; and it was only the storms of laughter and ridicule which swept over him, from all whose opinion was worth having, that detached from him, with some resistance and great unwillingness, the devotion of the multitude. Of the countless editions which were produced of his works during the short period of their popularity, scarcely any are now to be seen, and it would be curious to inquire what has become of the volumes which lay on so many drawing-room tables, which were presented by anxious parents to good young people, and were held by gentle dulness as a sort of new revelation, in 1852, and the succeeding years.