If you wish in this world to advance, Your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet. Or trust me, you haven't a chance.

Gilbert’s verse satirizes the social mechanics of “getting on” in public life: advancement depends less on quiet competence than on conspicuous self-advertisement. The jaunty rhyme and music-hall cadence mimic the very “blowing” it recommends, underscoring the irony that merit must be performed to be recognized. The line about having “no chance” without self-promotion reads as both cynical counsel and comic critique—an observation that institutions reward those who can market themselves, even when their “merits” are ordinary. In a broader Gilbertian vein, it aligns with his recurring lampoon of status, bureaucracy, and the gap between virtue and worldly success.