MEANING OF EISELL.
(Vol. iii., p. 66.)
I must beg a very small portion of your space to reply to your correspondent H. K. S. C., who criticises so pleasantly my remarks on the meaning of "eisell." The question is: Does the meaning Mr. Singer attaches to this word require in the passage cited the expression of quantity to make it definite? I am disposed to think that a definite quantity may be sometimes understood, in a well-defined act, although it be not expressed. On the other hand, your correspondent should know that English idiom requires that the name of a river should be preceded by the definite article, unless it be personified; and that whenever it is used without the article, it is represented by the personal pronoun he. Though a man were able "to drink the Thames dry," he could no more "drink up Thames" than he could drink up Neptune, or the sea-serpent, or do any other impossible feat.
I observed before, that "the notion of drinking up a river would be both unmeaning and out of place." I said this, with the conviction that there was a purpose in everything that Shakspeare wrote; and being still of this persuasion, allow me to protest against the terms "mere verbiage" and "extravagant rant," which your correspondent applies to the passage in question. The poet does not present common things as they appear to all men. Shakspeare's art was equally great,
whether he spoke with the tongues of madmen or philosophers. H. K. S. C. cannot conceive why each feat of daring should be a tame possibility, save only the last; but I say that they are all possible; that it was a daring to do not impossible but extravagant feats. As far as quantity is concerned, to eat a crocodile would be more than to eat an ox. Crocodile may be a very delicate meat, for anything I know to the contrary; but I must confess it appears to me to be introduced as something loathsome or repulsive, and (on the poet's part) to cap the absurdity of the preceding feat. The use made by other writers of a passage is one of the most valuable kinds of comment. In a burlesque some years ago, I recollect a passage was brought to a climax with the very words, "Wilt eat a crocodile?" The immediate and natural response was—not "the thing's impossible!" but—"you nasty beast!" What a descent then from the drinking up of a river to a merely disagreeable repast. In the one case the object is clear and intelligible, and the last feat is suggested by the not so difficult but little less extravagant preceding one; in the other, each is unmeaning (in reference to the speaker), unsuggested, and, unconnected with the other; and, regarding the order an artist would observe, out of place.
Samuel Hickson.
St. John's Wood, Jan. 27. 1851.
P.S. In replying to Mr. G. Stephens, in reference to the meaning of a passage in the Tempest, I expressed a wish that he would give the meaning of what he called a "common ellipsis" "stated at full." This stands in your columns (Vol. ii., p. 499.) "at first," in which expression I am afraid he would be puzzled to find any meaning.
I might safely leave H. K. S. C. to the same gentle correction bestowed upon a neighbour of his at Brixton some time since, by Mr. Hickson, but I must not allow him to support his dogmatic and flippant hypercriticism by falsehood and unfounded insinuation, and I therefore beg leave to assure him that I have no claim to the enviable distinction of being designated as the friend of Mr. Hickson, to whom I am an utter stranger, having never seen him, and knowing nothing of that gentleman but what his very valuable communications to your publication conveys.
I have further to complain of the want of truth in the very first paragraph of your correspondent's note: the question respecting the meaning of "Eisell" does not "remain substantially where Steevens and Malone left it;" for I have at least shown that Eisell meant Wormwood, and that Shakspeare has elsewhere undoubtedly used it in that sense.
Again: the remark about the fashion of extravagant feats, such as swallowing nauseous draughts in honour of a mistress, was quite uncalled for. Your correspondent would insinuate that I attribute to Shakspeare's time "what in reality belongs to the age of Du Guesclin and the Troubadours." Does he mean to infer that it did not in reality equally belong to Shakspeare's age? or that I was ignorant of its earlier prevalence?
The purport of such remarks is but too obvious; but he may rest assured that they will not tend to strengthen his argument, if argument it can be called, for I must confess I do not understand what he means by his "definite quantity." But the phrase drink up is his stalking-horse; and as he is no doubt familiar with the Nursery Rhymes[[1]], a passage in them—
"Eat up your cake, Jenny,
Drink up your wine."
may perhaps afford him further apt illustration.
The proverb tells us "It is dangerous playing with edge tools," and so it is with bad puns: he has shown himself an unskilful engineer in the use of Mr. Hickson's canon, with which he was to have "blown up" Mr. Hickson's argument and my proposition; with what success may be fairly left to the judgment of your readers. I will, however, give him another canon, which may be of use to him on some future occasion: "When a probable solution of a difficulty is to be found by a parallelism in the poet's pages, it is better to adopt it than to charge him with a blunder of our own creating."
The allusion to "breaking Priscian's head" reminds one of the remark of a witty friend on a similar occasion, that "there are some heads not easily broken, but the owners of them have often the fatuity to run them against stumbling-blocks of their own making."
S. W. Singer.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
Nursery Rhymes, edited by James Orchard Halliwell, Esq., F. R. S., &c.