Note 177 — PART II (continued 3)
Reading edition
We have seen that in Persia, as in Ireland, the ‘black north’ was the region whence cold winds and malignant beings proceeded. It is a well-known fact that cold no less than heat entered into the Hell of the Irish, as of the Northern nations, wherein they are followed by Dante, who, indeed, makes the sufferings of the inmost circle, devoted to the worst of sinners, to consist in intense cold. Cp. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III. i.:
‘The delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice.’
So Milton: ‘In fierce heat and in ice.’