y to
the same three sixes.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COURTLY AND MUSICAL.

My several royal poems, some twenty in number, may deserve a short and
special notice; though it is far from my intention to detail any
gracious condescensions of a private nature. I may however state, as a
curiosity of literature, that the 35th of my "Three Hundred Sonnets,"
published by Virtue in 1860, is headed "India's Empress," written
certainly twenty years before such a title was thought of, even by Lord
Beaconsfield in his pupa phase of D'Israeli. As very few have the
volume, long out of print, I will here produce that fortunate prophecy;
the "way chaotic" is the Sepoy Mutiny:--

"Our Empress Queen!--Victoria's name of glory
Added as England's grace to Hindostan:
O climax to this age's wondrous story,
Full of new hope to India, and to Man
In heathendom's dark places! For the light
Of our Jerusalem shall now shine there
Brighter than ever since the world began:--
Yet by a way chaotic, drear and gory
Travelled this blessing; as a martyr might
Wrestling to heaven through tortures unaware:
Our Empress Queen! for thee thy people's pray'r
All round the globe to God ascends united,
That He may strengthen thee no guilt to spare
Nor leave one act of goodness unrequited."

Another such curiosity of literature may this be considered: namely,
that the same versifier who in his youth fifty years ago saw the
coronation from a gallery seat in Westminster Abbey, overlooking the
central space, and wrote a well-known ode on the occasion, to be found
in his Miscellaneous Poems, is still in full force and loyalty, and
ready to supply one for his Queen's jubilee,--whereof words for music
will be found anon. Human life has not many such completed cycles to
celebrate, albeit I have lately had a golden wedding; alas! in a short
month after, closed by the good wife's sudden death: "So soon trod
sorrow on the heels of joy!" But I will not speak of that affliction
here and now: my present errand is more cheerful.

With reference, then, to the many verses of mine which I have reason to
hope are honoured by preservation in royal albums, I wish only to say
that if some few have appeared among my other poetries in print, they
shall not be repeated here: though I may record that whatever I have
sent from time to time have been graciously acknowledged, and that I
have heretofore met with pala