I have taken every kind of pains; I have asked London Correspondents to dinner; I have written flattering letters to everybody; I have attempted to get up a deputation of Beloochis to myself; I have tried to make people interview me; I have puffed myself in all the modes which study and research can suggest.  If anybody has, I have been “up to date.”  But Fortune is my foe, and I see others flourish by the very arts which fail in my hands.

I mention my Novel because its failure really is a mystery.  But I am not at all more fortunate in the reception of my poetry.  I have tried it every way—­ballades by the bale, sonnets by the dozen, loyal odes, seditious songs, drawing-room poetry, an Epic on the history of Labducuo, erotic verse, all fire, foam, and fangs, reflective ditto, humble natural ballads about signal-men and newspaper-boys, Life-boat rescues, Idyls, Nocturnes in rhyme, tragedies in blank verse.  Nobody will print them, or, if anybody prints them, he regrets that he cannot pay for them.  My moral and discursive essays are rejected, my descriptions of nature do not even get into the newspapers.  I have not been elected by the Sydenham Club (a clique of humbugs); I have let my hair grow long; I have worn a cloak and a Tyrolese hat, and attitudinised in the picture-galleries, but nobody asked who I am.  I have endeavoured to hang on to well-known poets and novelists—­they have not welcomed my advances.

My last dodge was a Satire, the Logrolliad, in which I lashed the charlatans and pretenders of the day.

  While hoary statesmen scribble in reviews
  And guide the doubtful verdict of the Blues,
  While HAGGARD scrawls, with blood in lieu of ink,
  While MALLOCK teaches Marquises to think,

so long I have rhythmically expressed my design to wield the dripping scourge of satire.  But nobody seems a penny the worse, and I am not a paragraph the better.  Short stories of a startling description fill my drawers, nobody will venture on one of them.  I have closely imitated every writer who succeeds, but my little barque may attendant sail, it pursues the triumph, but does not partake the gale.

I am now engaged on a Libretto for an heroic opera.

What offers?

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE IMPERIAL JACK-IN-THE-BOX.

Chorus (Everybody).  “EVERYTHING IN ORDER EVERYWHERE!  O!  WHAT A SURPRISE!  SOLD AGAIN!”]

* * * * *

THE IMPERIAL JACK-IN-THE-BOX.

A SONG FOR THE SHOUTING EMPEROR.

AIR—­“THE MAJOR-GENERAL.”

  I am the very pattern of a Modern German Emperor,
  Omniscient and omnipotent, I ne’er give way to temper, or
  If now and then I run a-muck in a Malay-like fashion,
  As there’s method in my madness, so there’s purpose in my passion. 
  ’Tis my aim to manage everything in order categorical—­