The meaning is plainly here avaler, not boire.
Here is another, which does not perhaps illustrate the passage in Hamlet, but resembles it (Act III. Sc. 2.):
"When we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers, thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough, than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed."
C. B.
[We are warned by several correspondents that this subject is becoming as bitter as wormwood to them. Before we dismiss it, however, we must record in our pages the opinion of one of the most distinguished commentators of the day, Mr. Hunter, who in his New Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 263., after quoting "potions of eysell" from the sonnet, says, "This shows it was not any river so called, but some desperate drink. The word occurs often in a sense in which acetum is the best representative, associated with verjuice and vinegar. It is the term used for one ingredient of the bitter potion given to our Saviour on the cross, about the composition of which the commentators are greatly divided. Thus the eighth prayer of the Fifteen Oos in the Salisbury Primer, 1555, begins thus: 'O Blessed Jesu, sweetness of heart and ghostly pleasure of souls, I beseech thee for the bitterness of the aysell and gall that thou tasted and suffered for me in thy passion,' &c."
Since the above was written, we have received a communication from An English Mother with the words and music of the nursery song, showing that the music does not admit the expressions "eat up," and "drink up;" quoting from Haldorson's Icelandic Lexicon, Eysill, m. Haustrum en Ose allsa; and asking what if Shakspeare meant either a pump or a bucket? We have also received a Note from G. F. G. showing that eisel in Dutch, German, and Anglo-Saxon, &c., meant vinegar, and stating, that during his residence in Florence in 1817, 1818, and 1819, he had often met with wormwood wine at the table of the Italians, a weak white wine of Tuscany, in which wormwood had been infused, which was handed round by the servants immediately after the soup, and was believed to promote digestion.]
Saxon Coin struck at Derby.—In the reign of Athelstan there was a royal mint at Derby, and a coinage was struck, having on the obverse merely the name of the town, Deoraby, and on the other side the legend "HEGENREDES MO . ON . DEORABY." What is the meaning of this inscription?
R. C. P.
Derby, Feb. 26. 1851.
[If HEGENREDES is rightly written, it is the name of a moneyer. MO . ON . DEORABY signifies Monetarius (or Moneyer) in Derby. Coins are known with MEGENFRED and MEGNEREDTES, and our correspondent may have read his coin wrongly.]