Many of your readers no doubt feel much indebted to your correspondent
for his able summary of the _eisell_ controversy; an example which it is
to be hoped will be followed in other cases. It has induced me to
collect a few passages for the purpose of showing that Shakspeare was
accustomed to make use of what may be termed _localisms_, which were
frequently as occult as in the instance of the _eisell_; and that he was
especially fond of establishing himself with the children of his brain
in the particular country by means of allusion to the neighbouring seas
and rivers. What appropriate signs are the Centaur and the Phoenix for
the city of Ephesus, the scene of the _Comedy of Errors_! The Italian,
Iachimo, speaks of--
"---- lips as common as the stairs
That mount the capitol."
And Petruchio alludes to the bursting of "a chestnut in a farmer's
fire," an incident probably of common occurrence in the sunny south. In
_Hamlet_, with which we are chiefly concerned, the king "gulps his
draughts of _Rhenish_ down;" and the grave-digger talks of a flagon of
_Rhenish_ having been poured by the jester upon his head, the wine with
which Denmark would naturally be supplied. His majesty inquires:
"Where are the _Switzers_? let them guard the door."
And the student Horatio is judiciously placed at the university of
Wittenburg. Constant mention is made in _The Merchant of Venice_ of the
Rialto; and Portia, not unmindful of the remarkable position of the
city, thus directs Balthazar:
"Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin'd speed
Unto the tranect, to the common ferry
Which trades to Venice."
What a fine Hebraism (Hazlitt remarks) is that of Shylock, where he
declares, that he would not have given his ring "for a whole wilderness
of monkeys!" And so, if the subjoined passage in _Othello_ relates to
the ceremony of the Doge's union with the sea, may we not exclaim "What
an admirable Venetianism!"
"I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."
The Moor has not travelled far to find the following simile:
"Like to the Pontick sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontick and the Hellespont."
Petruchio asserts in respect to Catherine:
"---- Were she as rough
As are the swelling Adriatic waves,
I come to wive it wealthily in Padua."
In the Roman plays the Tiber is repeatedly noticed. The Thames occurs in
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, and others. And in the Egyptian scenes of
_Antony and Cleopatra_, the Nile is several times introduced.
"Master Brook [says Falstaff], I will be thrown into Etna, as I
have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus."
Antony exclaims:
"Let Rome in Tiber melt!"
while Cleopatra gives utterance to the same sentiment:
"Melt Egypt into Nile! And kindly creatures
Turn all to serpents!"
In the last two passages it may be observed, that the hyperbolical
treatment of the two rivers bears some analogy to that of the _eisell_;
and it may also be pointed out, that although one of your correspondents
has rashly maintained that the word cannot mean a river because the
definite article is omitted before it, Thames, Tiber, and Nile here
occur without. Upon the whole it must appear that there is some reason
for adopting the motto:
"Flow on, thou shining river."