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Show ALFRED AUSTIN. To be appointed to succeed the great and winsome win-some Tennyson as Poet Laureate of England, placed Alfred Austin was a hard situation to meet. He had not made a great place in the literature lit-erature of England, the whole empire was in love with Tennyson ; England at the time had two or three wonderful poets, and it was easy to raise a laugh at Austin's expense and to charge his appointment to the favoritism of a more or less Puritanical queen. But Austin has written two or three poems which will last as long as the best of Tennyson's. Tenny-son's. Our judgment is that he had almost as much poetry in his soul as Tennyson, but he generally gen-erally had an impediment in his poetical speech which he could seldom overcome. |