Martin Farquhar Tupper
Martin Farquhar Tupper (
July 17,
1810 - November
1889) was an
English writer, and poet, and the author of
Proverbial Philosophy. He was born in
London.
He was the son of Martin Tupper, a doctor, who came of an old Huguenot family. He was educated at
Charterhouse and at
Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a prize for a theological essay, Gladstone being second to him. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, but never practised.
He began a long career of authorship in 1832 with
Sacra Poesis; in 1838 he published
Geraldine, and other poems, and for fifty years was fertile in producing both verse and prose; but his name is indissolubly connected with his long series of didactic moralisings in
blank verse, the
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1867), which for about twenty-five years enjoyed an extraordinary popularity that has ever since been the cause of persistent satire.
The first part was, however, a comparative failure, and
N. P. Willis, the American author, took it to be a forgotten work of the 17th century. The commonplace character of Tupper's reflections is indubitable, and his blank verse is only prose cut up into suitable lengths; but the Proverbial Philosophy was full of a perfectly genuine moral and religious feeling, and contained many apt and striking expressions. By these qualities it appealed to a large and uncritical section of the public. A genial, warm-hearted man, Tupper's humane instincts prompted him to espouse many reforming movements; he was an early supporter of the Volunteer movement, and did much to promote good relations with America. He was also a mechanical inventor in a small way. In 1886 he published
My Life as an Author; he died at
Albury, Surrey.At the end of his life he vanished in obscurity, nowadays his work is forgotten. Despite the words on his death stone: although he is dead, he will speak.
*
*
Free ebook of Martin Farquhar Tupper at
Project Gutenberg
