“This work glows and glitters all over with the effluence and lustre of a fine imagination, and is steeped in the rich hues and pervading beauty of a mild wisdom, and a genial and kindly morality.”—­Scots Times.

“The ‘Proverbial Philosophy’ contains much sound reflection, moral and religious maxims of the highest importance, elegant figures and allusions, sound and serious observations of life,—­all expressed in most appropriate and well-selected language.”—­Gentleman’s Magazine.

“One of the most original and curious productions of our time.”—­Atlas.

“A book as full of sweetness as a honeycomb, of gentleness as woman’s heart; in its wisdom worthy the disciple of a Solomon, in its genius the child of a Milton.  Every page, nay almost every line, teems with evidences of profound thinking and various reading, and the pictures it often presents to our mind are the most imaginative and beautiful that can possibly be conceived.”—­Court Journal.

“If men delight to read Tupper both in England and America, why should they not study him both in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth?  The judgment of persons who are more or less free from insular prejudices is said in some degree to anticipate that which is admitted to be the conclusive verdict of posterity.”—­Saturday Review.

“The popularity of the ‘Proverbial Philosophy’ of Martin Tupper is a gratifying and healthy symptom of the present taste in literature, the book being full of lessons of wisdom and piety, conveyed in a style startling at first by its novelty, but irresistibly pleasing by its earnestness and eloquence.”—­Literary Gazette.

“Mr. Mill, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Browning, Mr. Morris, Mr. Rossetti—­all these writers have a wider audience in America than in England.  So too has Mr. Tupper.  The imagination staggers in attempting to realise the number of copies of his works which have been published abroad.  Unlike most of his contemporaries, further, he has conquered popularity in both hemispheres.  He has won the suffrages of two great nations.  He may now disregard criticism.”—­Daily News.

* * * * *

This sonnet, written and published in 1837, nearly half a century ago, explains itself and may fairly come in here as a protest and prophecy by a then young author.  And, nota bene, if hyper-criticism objects that a sonnet must always be a fourteen-liner (this being one only of twelve) I reply that it is sometimes of sixteen, as in the one by Dante to Madonna, which I have translated in my “Modern Pyramid:”  and there are instances of twelve, as one at least of Shakespeare’s in his Passionate Pilgrim.  But this is a small technicality.

    To my Book “Proverbial Philosophy,” before Publication.