"Eat UP your cake, Jenny,
_Drink_ UP YOUR wine"--
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:"
{211} 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]
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."