Talk:Martin Farquhar Tupper

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[edit] NPOV

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.

Come on now, Tupper's 'poetry' sucks. I have an original copy of the 13th edition of Proverbial Philosophy, and know what I'm talking about. It's some of the most boring and pompous drivel that ever sold in the millions. However, it is not for us to judge its quality, nor to claim that the public liked it because it was good. (BTW, the last sentence quoted above is a non-sequitur; if the public were truly uncritical, they would not have been able to appreciate either the 'genuine moral and religious feeling' or the 'many apt and striking expressions' and would presumably only have bought it because everybody else from Queen Victoria down owned a copy. Which they did, and which is probably a major reason why it sold so well.)

The more significant and verifiable fact about Tupper is that he was massively popular in the Victorian period, probably bigger than Tennyson and Browning, and yet now he is almost forgotten, and what little critical writing about him exists is almost entirely negative. He was the Robert James Waller, the Paolo Coelho, of his era. That, at least, can be demonstrated by the near-total eclipse of his enormous fame after his death. Lexo (talk) 00:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)