Tupper!

Martin F. Tupper was an English poet and philosopher whose most famous works included Proverbial Philosophy, which included "rhythmic" proverbs on how to be a proper Englishman.

While Tupper and Whitman are both associated with their free form, causing remarks of egotism by many reviewers, and some content as seen in the discussion of the sublime etc... They seem the most similar in regards to their social standings, public opinion, and how they represented something more than just what their poetry had to say. In many English reviews, as Whitman first started out, he was compared to Tupper, most often in a negative light. While Tupper associated with the elite, upper class advocating the Anglo Saxon race, and Whitman associated with the lower, working class advocating equality and popular opinion, they were both seen as outlandish insults... So says Matt Cohen in his essay "MARTIN TUPPER,  WALT WHITMAN,  AND THE EARLY REVIEWS OF LEAVES OF GRASS:"

 To most of  the s e  pape r s ,  then,  Whi tman and Tuppe r ,  r epr e s ent ing the  wor s t  of  both worlds, were happily uni t ed by a coinc idenc e  of  form.

 Even in America, Tupper was frequently pictured as an embarrassing Englishman, appearing drunk and rambling about England's superiority over America. Whitman was similarly seen as an ignorant egotist, trying to represent a country that didn't want him.. which indefinitely they did.. Whitman even recognized this association and used it to us his advantage, riding off the coattails of Tupper and his current celebrity [1860ish], re-publishing all the reviews in which they were compared.

For me, they seemed to be two figures in which their homelands loved to hate, only momentarily for Whitman though... which in turn sort of did what Whitman hoped for, a means of unification. They seemed to represent a change that was taking place in poetry, that old English scholars didn't want to accept, as seen in their negative reviews. While Tupper represented more of what was associated with the typical poet of the times, stuffy, political, white wigged, conservative... He did relate to Walt by going against the grain. Maybe it wasn't his desire to be that way, but that is how the public viewed him. They both offered something different than the status quo.. which Whitman seemed to recognize for he reviewed Tupper as "one of the rare men of the times."