) relieve the fouls of friends and relations from the place of
*
¡The defcriptions which Bede has given of the feats of miferv and
Jre very poetical. He paints purgatory as a valley of a
length, breadth, and depth; one fide filled by furious,
hail and fnow; the other with lambent, inextinguilhable
. In theie the fouls of the decealed alternately experienced
extremes of heat and cold. Both Shakefpeare and Milton make
■the fame idea 1 the firft in his beautiful defcription of the ftate
fthejdead in Meafure for Meafure :
Ay, but to die and go we know not where;.
T o lie in cold obftruftion, and to r o t ;
This fenfible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted ipirit
STo bat be in fiery fioods, or to refidc
In thrilling regions o f thick-ribbed ice ;
■ To be imprifon’d in the viewlefs winds*
And blown with reftlefs violence about
The pendent world I
thought is drefied only in different words:
At certain revolutions all the damn’d
Are brought ; and feel by turns the bitter change
O f fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce;
From beds o f raging fire to ftarve in ice
H Their foft ethereal heat.
■s t^le Tweed at Dryiurgh boat, and re-enter the ihire of
On the northern fide, in the deep gloom of wood, are RVburch.
* Bede, lib. V . c. 12. p. 19.6..