"Will live as a poem of permanent power and charm. It will receive high appreciation from all who can enter into its meaning, for its graphic and liquid pictures of external beauty, the depth and truth of its purgatorial ideas, and the ardour, tenderness, and exaltation of its spiritual life."—Spectator, May 5th, 1877.
"I have lately been reading a poem which has interested me very much, a poem called 'The Epic of Hades.' Many of you may never have heard of it; most of you may never have seen it. It is, as I view it, another gem added to the wealth of the poetry of our language."—Mr. Bright's speech on Cobden, at Bradford, July 25th, 1877.
"In the blank verse of the 'Epic of Hades,' apt words are so simply arranged with unbroken melody, that if the work were printed as prose, it would remain a song, and every word would still be where the sense required it; not one is set in a wrong place through stress of need for a mechanical help to the music. The poem has its sound mind housed in a sound body."—Professor Morley in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1878.
"I have read the 'Epic of Hades,' and find it truly charming. Its pictures will long remain with me, and the music of its words."—Oliver Wendell Holmes, April, 1884.
THE EPIC OF HADES.
ILLUSTRATED QUARTO EDITION.
"Of Mr. Chapman's illustrations it is pleasant to be able to speak with considerable admiration, not only because they are a fortunate echo of the verse, and represent the feelings and incidents of the 'Epic,' but because of their intrinsic merits. There is in them a fine and high inspiration of an indefinite sort."—Athenæum, March 29th, 1879.
"'The Epic of Hades' is certainly one of the most remarkable works of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Here is an édition de luxe which may possibly tempt the unthinking to search for the jewel within the casket."—World, February 12th, 1879.