nset of the
soul-destroyer or the doom of the stern guardian of the other world."
Few subjects, indeed, have afforded greater scope for the imagination
than the hereafter of the human soul, and hence, as might be expected,
numerous myths have been invented in most countries to account for its
mysterious departure in the hour of death, from the world of living men
to its unseen, unknown home in the distant land of spirits.

[734] Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 46.

Shakespeare several times uses the word "limbo" in a general
signification for hell, as in "Titus Andronicus" (iii. 1):

"As far from help as limbo is from bliss."

And in "All's Well that Ends Well" (v. 3), Parolles says: "for, indeed,
he was mad for her, and talked of Satan, and of limbo, and of furies,
and I know not what." In "Henry VIII." (v. 4), "in Limbo Patrum" is
jocularly put for a prison; and, again, in "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 2),
"he's in Tartar limbo." "According to the schoolmen, _Limbus Patrum_ was
the place, bordering on hell, where the souls of the patriarchs and
saints of the Old Testament remained till the death of Christ, who,
descending into hell, set them free."[735]

[735] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 246.

One of the punishments invented of old for the covetous and avaricious,
in hell, was to have melted gold poured down their throats, to which
allusion is made by Flaminius, in "Timon of Athens" (iii. 1), who,
denouncing Lucullus for his mean insincerity towards his friend Timon,
exclaims, on rejecting the bribe offered him to tell his master that he
had not seen him:

"May these add to the number that may scald thee!
Let molten coin be thy damnation."

In the "Shepherd's Calendar," Lazarus declares himself to have seen
covetous men and women in hell dipped in caldrons of molten lead. Malone
quotes the following from an old black-letter ballad of "The Dead Man's
Song:"

"Ladles full of melted gold
Were poured down their throats."

Crassus was so punished by the Parthians.[736]

[736] Singer's "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. viii. p. 291.

There is possibly a further allusion to this imaginary punishment in
"Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 5), where Cleopatra says to the messenger:

"But, sirrah, mark, we use
To say, the dead are well: bring it to that,
The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour
Down thy ill-uttering throat."

According to a well-known superstition among sailors,