Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/87

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76
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

Mr. Hilary.

Not much, I should think, with Dante, but a great deal with the blue devils.

Mr. Flosky.

It is very certain, and much to be rejoiced at, that our literature is hag-ridden. Tea has shattered our nerves; late dinners make us slaves of indigestion; the French Revolution has made us shrink from the name of philosophy, and has destroyed, in the more refined part of the community, (of which number I am one,) all enthusiasm for political liberty. That part of the reading public which shuns the solid food of reason for the light diet of fiction, requires a perpetual adhibition of sauce piquante to the palate of its depraved imagination. It lived upon ghosts, goblins, and skeletons, (I and my friend, Mr. Sackbut, served up a few of