(Vol. ii., p. 249.)
If Pepys' friends actually did _drink up_ the two quarts of _wormwood
wine_ which he gave them, it must, as LORD BRAYBROOKE suggests, have
been rendered more palatable than the _propoma_ which was in use in
Shakspeare's time. I have been furnished by a distinguished friend with
the following, among other Notes, corroborative of my explanation of
_eisell_:
"I have found no better recipe for making wormwood wine than
that given by old Langham in his _Garden of Health_; and as he
directs its use to be confined to 'Streine out a _little_
spoonful, and drinke it with a draught of ale or wine,' I think
it must have been so atrociously unpalatable, that to _drink it
up_, as Hamlet challenged Laertes to do, would have been as
strong an argumentum ad stomachum as to digest a crocodile, even
when appetised by a slice of the loaf."
It is evident, therefore, that but small doses of this nauseously bitter
medicament were taken at once, and to take a large draught, _to drink
up_ a quantity, "would be an extreme pass of amorous demonstration
sufficient, one would think, to have satisfied even Hamlet." Our
ancestors seem to have been partial to medicated wines; and it is most
probable that the wormwood wine Pepys gave his friends had only a slight
infusion of the bitter principle; for we can hardly conceive that such
"pottle draughts" as two quarts could be taken as a treat, of such a
nostrum as the _Absinthites_, or wormwood wine, mentioned by Stuckius,
or that prescribed by the worthy Langham.