He is kindly, gay and gracious—he is manly, bold and brave;
He bore him manly, princely, as an English prince should do;
He took the rubs and roughings of travel like a man,
And, if he won new friends in crowds, to the old friends still was true.
It was once said of an old Tory that, although generally intelligent, whenever he began to talk of the Royal Family or the nobility, his jaw dropped, and he became quite inarticulate. Punch's jaw certainly did not drop over the Queen's new title, for which he had no welcome. He thought it a piece of Oriental Disraelian clap-trap, gave a sarcastic account of the Proclamation at Delhi, and published cartoons in which Disraeli figured as repainting the sign of the old Queen's Head, and as a magician with new crowns for old. Punch's antipathy to the new style also found vent in a "Hymn to Victoria" after Ben Jonson:—
Queen or Empress, Lady fair,
Sovran of the swelling deep,
Who, in distant Orient air,
Dost the sway of nations keep,
Must we, changing style with scene,