We do not attempt to analyse these passages, it would take up too much space; and the reader, if he thinks fit, can do it for himself. Neither have we, except on one or two occasions, resorted to the usual expedient of marking in italics all we would censure, for almost the whole of our extracts would then have been printed in italics. Of course there is something better than this in the poem, or we should not have given it such praise as we have; but there is also a great deal that is worse. The various specimens we have presented are no bad average of what constitutes a very large portion of the book. Yet this is the poem which, we are told, has been received with most applausive welcome, both by the public and the critics! In the edition we have before us--the third, and, we believe, the latest--there is appended at the conclusion a series of laudatory extracts from Reviews and Magazines, and also of opinions, most eulogistic, given by men of literary celebrity. In what shape these last were originally expressed, whether in print or in private letter, we are not informed. If extracts from private letters, though doubtless published with the writer's permission, their publication strikes us as a novelty, even in these advertising days. Mr Tennyson is set down as saying--"I can scarcely trust myself to say how much I admire it, for fear of falling into extravagance." Sir E. Bulwer Lytton speaks with more caution--"A most remarkable poem, of great beauty, and greater promise. My admiration of it is deep and sincere." Ebenezer Elliott exclaims--"It contains poetry enough to set up _fifty_ poets." The ladies are still more enthusiastic. Mrs S. C. Hall outbids Mr Elliott. "There is matter enough in it to float a _hundred_ volumes of the usual prosy poetry. It contains some of the most wonderful things I ever read." Eulogistic extracts from Reviews, and Magazines, and newspapers, follow in abundance; it is a universal clapping of hands and shout of triumph. The whole vocabulary of applause is exhausted. An American critic "classes it with the Iliad, and Macbeth, and Paradise Lost!"--a classification not quite so lucid as it is flattering. Our more sober and Dissenting brethren seem to have pardoned all its heresies, or not to have seen them, in the dazzling and unintermitting blaze of its genius. Its critics catch the tone of their applauded poem, and speak in hyperbolics, as the only language capable of expressing the intensity of their admiration. "Who," exclaims one, "that has ever read _Festus_, has forgotten that _prodigious_ poem? You find in it all _contradictions reconciled_--all _improbabilities accomplished_--_all opposites paired_--all formulas swallowed--all darings of thought and language attempted"--a rapture of criticism, which took us with much surprise, when we saw the respectable authority attached to it.