certainly implies quite the reverse; for it can be taken to mean neither more nor less than the identical glass of wine that Jenny had standing before her. A parallel passage will be found in Shakspeare's sonnet (CXIV.):
"Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery:"
and in this category, on the rule exponed, since it cannot positively appertain to the other, must, I think, be placed the line of Hamlet,—
"Woo't drink up eisell?"
as a noun implying absolute entirety; which might be a river, but could not be grammatically applied to any unexpressed quantity.
Now what is the amount and value of Mr. Singer's proposition? He says:
"In Thomas's Italian Dictionary, 1562, we have 'Assenzio, Eysell'[[4]]; and Florio renders that word [Assenzio, not Eysell?] by 'wormwood.' What is meant, however, is wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use."
When pressed by Lord Braybrooke ("Notes and Queries," Vol. ii., p. 286.), who proved, by an extract from Pepys's Diary, that wormwood wine, so far from bearing out Mr. Singer's description, was, in fact, a fashionable luxury, probably not more nauseous than the pale ale so much in repute at the present day, Mr. Singer very adroitly produced a "corroborative note" from "old Langham" ("Notes and Queries," Vol. ii., p. 315.), which, curiously enough, is castrated of all that Langham wrote pertaining to the question in issue. Treating of the many virtues of the prevailing tonic as an appetiser, and restorer "of a good color" to them that be "leane and evil colored," Langham says:
["Make wormwood wine thus: take aqua vitæ and malmsey, of each like much, put it in a glasse or bottell with a few leaves of dried wormwood, and let it stand certain days,] and strein out a little spoonfull, and drink it with a draught of ale or wine: [it may be long preserved.]"[[5]]