Thus it will be seen that the reason for "streining out a little spoonfull" as a restorative for a weak stomach was less on account of the infusion being so "atrociously unpalatable," than of the alcohol used in its preparation.
Dr. Venner also recommends as an excellent stomachic,
"To drink mornings fasting, and sometimes also before dinner, a draught of wormwood-wine or beer:"
and we may gather the "atrocious bitterness" of the restorative, by the substitute he proposes: "or, for want of them," he continues:
"white wine or stale beer, wherein a few branches of wormwood have, for certain hours, been infused."[[6]]
Dr. Parr, quoting Bergius, describes Absinthium as "a grateful stomachic;" and Absinthites as "a pleasant form of the wormwood."[[7]]
Is this therefore the article that Hamlet proposed to drink UP with his crocodile? So far from thinking so, I have ventured to coincide with Archdeacon Nares in favour of Steevens; for whether it be Malone's vinegar, or Mr. Singer's more comfortable stomachic, the challenge to drink either "in such a rant, is so inconsistent, and even ridiculous, that we must decide for the river, whether its name be exactly found or not."[[8]]
I am quite unconscious of any purport in my remarks, other than they appear on paper; and I should be sorry indeed to accuse Mr. Singer of being "ignorant" of anything; but I venture to suggest that those young gentlemen of surpassing spirit, who ate crocodiles, drank UP eisell, and committed other anomalies against nature in honor of their mistresses, belonged decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which he drank[[9]], though I never discovered that it was drank up by him. He generally wore a doublet and breeches of satin, slashed and lined with coloured taffata; and walked about with a gilliflower in one hand, and his gloves in the other. His veritable portrait is extant, and is engraved in Mr. Knight's Pictorial Shakspeare.[[10]]
It will be time enough to decide which of us has run his head against "a stumbling-block of his own making," when Mr. Singer shall have found a probable solution of his difficulty "by a parallelism in the poet's pages."
H. K. Staple Causton.