My respected publishers, now that my “Memoirs” are in print, have asked
me if I wish to precede them by any prefatory remarks; this I have no
need of doing, since the first paragraph in the work is a sufficient
explanation of why the book was written. But an event having happened
which has put half the nation in mourning, and perhaps most of all
our august sovereign herself, I feel impelled to utter a few words of
sympathy on that sad occasion to her, the loss of a deserving Poet
Laureate.
The time has come when the nation’s trust is no longer reposed in any
party, but it is to be hoped that its confidence in the throne is
unabated. It has taken centuries to produce a sovereign Power whose
unbiased will has become moulded to the English idea of rule, and which
is in perfect accord with the desires of our now vast numbers; and it
is ardently to be wished that a great people may realize, under every
change, that they possess one true friend who occupies the first of the
three estates of the realm.
As an individual, part owner of these three estates for yet a little
while, I desire to leave behind me, not the words of a laureate, but of
a loving subject of the best of sovereigns and the best of women. If
I, as a poet, have a wish that I would see gratified, it is to hear my
“Ode,” written and published during the year of the Jubilee, sung by
loyal voices to the sound of trumpets and to the beating of the drum! It
may come in appropriately, as by an amateur, during the present little
_interregnum_. For the perusal of those who partake of my love for, my
faith in, the throne, I give it here entire, and once more to my readers
say, “Farewell!”