The vacant laureateship was not filled till the close of 1895, when the appointment of Mr. Alfred Austin by Lord Salisbury unloosed a flood of ridicule. In the cartoon "Alfred the Little" _Punch_ depicted a diminutive figure, standing on tip-toe, as he hangs his lyre on the walls of the Temple of the Muses. The laurelled bust of Tennyson is shown in the interior, while outside the figures of Sir Edwin Arnold and Sir Lewis Morris are seen dissembling their disappointment. A few weeks later the inclusion of the new Laureate amongst the celebrities of Madame Tussaud's Exhibition prompted the malicious soliloquy of "Alfred amongst the Immortals." [Sidenote: _Swinburne and the British Academy_] Mr. Austin's unfortunate efforts at the time of the Boer war did not escape _Punch's_ derision, and when his name failed to appear in the New Year's Honour List of 1901, _Punch_, in a sardonic parody, modelled on the famous lyric in _Atalanta in Calydon_, represented Swinburne ironically asking:-- Austin--what of the Knight, Heavy with hope deferred? When will he solace our sight, Panoplied, plumed and spurred? Swinburne and Meredith, two other "eminent Victorians," both died in 1909. Towards them _Punch's_ attitude had undergone considerable vicissitudes. Swinburne's erotic ballads had, as I have noticed in an earlier volume, excited _Punch's_ vehement disapproval. Yet he paid him the tribute of constant imitation and parody. When the proposal for establishing a British Academy was brought forward in 1897, _Punch_, who "crabbed" the scheme from the outset, was not content with printing imaginary letters from various aspirants--Hall Caine, Miss Marie Corelli, Grant Allen, William Watson, "Sarah Grand," and Clement Scott--but made good play with Swinburne's publicly avowed disgust at having his name associated with a "_colluvies litterarum_" and a "ridiculous monster." The exclusion of pure or creative literature from the British Academy, it may be added, prompted Sambourne's cartoon in 1902 in which a sour-visaged lady in academical costume is seen mounting the steps to the Academy, while three graceful figures--Drama, Romance, and Poetry--are locked out on the other side of the railings. To return to Swinburne, it should be noted that probably more poems were written in the "Dolores" stanza throughout this period than in any other metre. And when he died in 1909, _Punch_, granting him full amnesty for his violence in controversy, his extravagance and lawlessness of spirit, forgot the rebel and only remembered the singer:-- What of the night? For now his day is done, And he, the herald of the red sunrise, Leaves us in shadow even as when the sun Sinks from the sombre skies. High peer of Shelley, with the chosen few He shared the secrets of Apollo's lyre, Nor less from Dionysian altars drew The god's authentic fire.