unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office: and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd knolling a departing friend."

We may quote a further allusion in "Venus and Adonis" (l. 701):

"And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell."

In a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII., it is ordered "that
clarks are to ring no more than the passing bell for poare people, nor
less for an honest householder, and he be a citizen; nor for children,
maydes, journeymen, apprentices, day-labourers, or any other poare
person." In 1662, the Bishop of Worcester[730] asks, in his visitation
charge: "Doth the parish clerk or sexton take care to admonish the
living, by tolling of a passing-bell, of any that are dying, thereby to
meditate of their own deaths, and to commend the other's weak condition
to the mercy of God?" It was, also, called the "soul-bell," upon which
Bishop Hall remarks: "We call it the soul-bell because it signifies the
departure of the soul, not because it helps the passage of the soul."
Ray, in his "Collection of Proverbs," has the following couplet:

"When thou dost hear a toll or knell
Then think upon thy passing-bell."

[730] "Annals of Worcester," 1845.

It was formerly customary to draw away the pillow from under the heads
of dying persons, so as to accelerate their departure--an allusion to
which we find in "Timon of Athens" (iv. 3), where Timon says:

"Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads."

This, no doubt, originated in the notion that a person cannot die
happily on a bed made of pigeons' feathers. Grose says: "It is
impossible for a person to die whilst resting on a pillow stuffed with
the feathers of a dove; but that he will struggle with death in the most
exquisite torture. The pillows of dying persons are therefore frequently
taken away when they appear in great agonies, lest they may have
pigeon's feathers in them." Indeed, in Lancashire, this practice is
carried to such an extent that some will not allow dying persons to lie
on a feather bed, because they hold that it very much increases their
pain and suffering, and actually retards their departure.[731]

[731] Harland and Wilkinson's "Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1869, p.
268; see "English Folk-Lore," 1878, pp. 99, 100; also "Notes
and Queries," 1st series, vol. iv. p. 133.

The departure of the human soul from this world, and i