“he had drained for months the cup of penitence”
This metaphor is the conscious musing inside the mind of Robert Herrick, a man who has just informed the reader that he eats his meals out of rubbish heaps, considers his squalid sleeping quarter a prison and will shortly after describe attaining the knowledge of what is means to slip in a coma of despair. That these Herrick’s thoughts tell us two things: not just that that his life has bottomed out, but that he has reached the point where he feels like he has finally paid for whatever sins may have led here there. More importantly, however, it tells the reader that this pathetic figure is educated and aesthetic.
“But religion is a savage thing, like the universe it illuminates; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong.”
This assertion is made by a former missionary whose zeal was dampened by a church that saw the work of bringing god to pagans as little more than covering up their nakedness and building a church with a bell. His indicate that religion is something far more than decorative to him and his view of what religion actually should be like makes it very possible to believe the widespread assumption that Joseph Conrad’s maniacal Colonel Kurtz at least partially inspired by Attwater, the character giving voice to this metaphor.
“he looks at us and laughs like God!”
A strangely off-putting simile that would seem as though the speaker meant the devil. But though the devil may laugh, it is at best a nervous titter because he knows there is always at least one more powerful than he. This loaded comparison says much about the full extent of the person about whom it describes. The speaker is aware that the person can afford to laugh like the devil and still be god.
“He was a thief among thieves”
Herrick finally admits that the rope he grasped to pull himself up from rock bottom was not exactly made of gold. Sometimes when one think they are at rock bottom and they grab for that rope, they find there is still a little further slide. Herrick’s acknowledgment of his present state of affairs at this time seems little improvement over starving penitent.
“Well, it don’t amount to a hill of beans”
This familiar metaphor is almost literally the last word of the novel. Figuratively, it sums up pretty well what was gained for many as a consequence of what is easily the most sordid and unpleasant cast of characters in novel Stevenson ever wrote. Even Mr. Hyde himself might be well agree that most deserve even less than enough beans to make a hill.
