[3] On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, except Algernon Charles Swinburne or William Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated.

[8] Sir Owen Seaman (1861–1936) gave added currency to the supposed connection with Lord Salisbury in his poem, "To Mr Alfred Austin", In Cap and Bells, London & New York, 1900, 9: At length a callous Tory chief arose,Master of caustic jest and cynic gibe,Looked round the Carlton Club and lightly choseIts leading scribe.Austin served as Deputy-Lieutenant for Herefordshire.

In 1861, after two false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer with The Season: a Satire, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation.

In 1870 he published a volume of criticism, The Poetry of the Period, which was conceived in the spirit of satire, and attacked Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Swinburne in an unrestrained fashion.

[2] Austin wrote of the "detestable gibberish" of Robert Browning, of Swinburne's "emasculated poetic voice," and of William Morris as "the idle singer of an empty day," and he prophesied that Tennyson's In Memoriam "will assuredly be handed over to the dust when a generation arises that has come to its senses."

Austin himself, while he continued to "think that there was a strong element of truth in The Poetry of the Period," soon came to deem "the tone in which it was written unfortunate," and in 1873, three years after its publication, he withdrew it from circulation.

[12] A contemporary critic, Walter Whyte, praised the "purity" of Austin's style: "He writes sound unaffected English; his meaning is always transparent.

"[13] The critic George Saintsbury, while endorsing the general view that "Alfred Austin hardly deserved to be made poet laureate," found him "a really vigorous and accomplished writer of prose, and a tolerable master of unambitious form in verse."

[16] Now upon English soil I soon shall stand, Homeward from climes that fancy deems more fair; And well I know that there will greet me there No soft foam fawning upon smiling strand, No scent of orange-groves, no zephyrs bland; But Amazonian March, with breast half bare And sleety arrows whistling through the air, Will be my welcome from that burly land.

Yet he who boasts his birth-place yonder lies Owns in his heart a mood akin to scorn For sensuous slopes that bask 'neath Southern skies, Teeming with wine and prodigal of corn, And, gazing through the mist with misty eyes, Blesses the brave bleak land where he was born.