Eisell will, I think, if examples from our old writers decide, be at least acknowledged to mean in Shakspeare what we now (improperly?) call vinegar, and not any river. In The Goolden Letanye of the Lyf and Passion of our Lorde Jesu Criste, edited from a MS. (No. 546.) in the library at Lambeth, by Mr. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, ii. 252., comes this entreaty:—
"For thi thirste and tastyng of gall and eysyl, graunte us to tast the swetnes of thi spirite; and have mercy on us."
All through the sixteenth century, and ages before, eisell was not only a housewife's word, but in every one's mouth—in the poet's as he sang, the preacher's as he preached, and the people's while they prayed. Surely, for this very reason, if Shakspeare meant Hamlet to rant about a river, the bard would never have made the king choose, before all others, that very one which bore the same name with the then commonest word in our tongue: a tiny stream, moreover, which, if hardly ever spoken of in these days of geographical knowledge, must have been much less known then to Englishmen.
DA. ROCK.
Buckland, Faringdon.
Your correspondent J. S. W. well deserves the thanks of all those of your readers who have taken an interest in the discussion on the meaning of eisell in Hamlet, for the able manner in which he has summed up the evidence put forward by the counsel on both sides. Perhaps he is correct in his conclusion, that, of twelve good men and true, nine would give their verdict for eisell being "a river;" while but three would favour the "bitter potion." Nevertheless, I must say, I think the balance yet hangs pretty even, and I rather incline myself to the latter opinion, for these reasons:
1. There is no objection whatever, even in the judgment of its enemies, against eisell meaning "a bitter potion," except that they prefer the river as more to their taste; for the objection of MR. CAUSTON I conceive to have no weight at all, that "to drink up" can only be applied "to a definite quantity;" surely it may also mean, and very naturally, to drink "without stint." And eisell need not be taken as meaning nothing more than "vinegar;" it may be a potion or medicament of extreme bitterness, as in the 111th sonnet, and in Lydgate's Troy Boke quoted by MR. SINGER, such, that while it would be possible to sip or drink it in small quantities, or diluted, yet to swallow a quantity at a draught would be almost beyond endurance; and hence, I submit, the appropriateness of "drink up."
2. There is this objection against eisell meaning a river,—Would the poet who took a world-wide illustration from Ossa, refer in the same passage to an obscure local river for another illustration? Moreover it does not appear to be sufficient to find any mere river, whose name resembles the word in question, without showing also that there is a propriety in Hamlet's alluding, to that particular river, either on account of its volume of water, its rapid flow, &c., or from its being in sight at the time he spoke, or near at hand.
Can any of your readers, who have Shakspeare more at their fingers' ends than myself, instance any exact parallel of this allusion of his to local scenery, which, being necessarily obscure, must more or less mar the universality, if I may so speak, of his dramas. Could such instances be pointed out (which I do not deny) or at least any one exactly parallel instance, it would go far towards reconciling myself at least to the notion that eisell is the river Essel.
H. C. K.