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.

S.W. SINGER.

Mickleham, Sept. 30. 1850.


_Eisell_ (Vol. ii., p. 242.).--The attempt of your very learned
correspondent, MR. SINGER, to show that "eisell" was _wormwood_, is, I
fear, more ingenious than satisfactory. It is quite true that wormwood
wine and beer were ordinary beverages, as wormwood bitters are now; but
Hamlet would have done little in challenging Laertes to a draught of
wormwood. As to "eisell," we have the following account of it in the
"Via Recta ad Vitam longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the
Nature, Faculties, and Effects of all such Things as by way of
Nourishments, and Dieteticale Observations make for the Preservation of
Health, &c. &c. By Jo. Venner, Doctor of Physicke at Bathe in the Spring
and Fall, and at other Times in the Burrough of North-Petherton, neere
to the Ancient Haven Towne of Bridgewater in Somersetshire. London,
1620."

"Eisell, or the vinegar which is made of cyder, is also a good
sauce, it is of a very penetrating nature and is like to