NOTE XXXI.

_Macbeth_.--Love and health to all!
Then I'll sit down: give me some wine, fill full:--
I drink to the general joy of the whole table,
And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss;
Would he were here! to all, and him, we thirst,
_And all to all_.--

Though this passage is, as it now stands, capable of more meanings than
one, none of them are very satisfactory; and, therefore, I am inclined
to read it thus:

--to all, and him, we thirst,
_And hail to all_.

Macbeth, being about to salute his company with a bumper, declares that
he includes Banquo, though absent, in this act of kindness, and wishes
_health_ to all. _Hail_ or _heil_ for _health_ was in such continual use
among the good-fellows of ancient times, that a drinker was called a
_was-heiler_, or a _wisher of health_, and the liquor was termed
_was-heil_, because _health_ was so often _wished_ over it. Thus in the
lines of Hanvil the monk,

Jamque vagante scypho, discincto gutture _was-heil_
Ingeminant _was-heil_: labor est plus perdere vini
Quam sitis.--

These words were afterwards corrupted into _wassail_ and _wassailer_.