Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/132

120 Heaven and angels, and torments and everlasting happiness; but when I got a little on I found there was no meaning in all these words, or, if any, it was a bad meaning. Eternal misery, perhaps, only meant a moment's disappointment about a bit of a letter; and everlasting happiness meant two people talking nonsense together for five minutes."

Mr. Fantom is the life and death of an atheist of the Jacobin fashion, and The Delegate is a clever skit that with a very few alterations might be used at the present day. Sorrowful Sam, which was Sally' production, is mentioned as having given infinite comfort to a sick and despondent cottager.

There are a few allegories, by far the best of which is Parley the Porter, which is on the same idea as Bunyan's Siege of the City of Mansoul, though probably Hannah had never heard of the latter, since she did not like allegory, and never read the Pilgrim's Progress till after she had emerged into the literary world. Her poems and ballads are not of very high quality, perhaps from the deficiency in imagination which made her averse to mysticism or allegory,—though she could turn an epigrammatic couplet in a telling manner. The Bad Bargain is a sort of Devil's Walk:— See there the Prince of Darkness stands With baits for souls in both his hands. To one he offers empire whole, And gives a sceptre for a soul;