Aug. 30. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



157 



bears some analog;/ 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." 



T. 



Eisell will, I think, if examples from our old 

 writers decide, be at least acknowledged to mean 

 in Shakspeare what we now (improperly?) call 

 vinegar, and not any river. In The Goolden Le- 

 tanye of the Lyf and Passion of our Lorde Jesu 

 Criste, edited from a IMS. (No. .546.) in the library 

 at Lambeth, by IMr. Maskell, Monumenta Riiualia, 

 ii. 252., comes this entreaty : — 



" For thi tbirste and tastyng of gall and et/syl, 

 graunte us to last the swetnes of thi spirite ; and have 

 mercy on us." 



All through the sixteenth century, and ages 

 before, eisell was not only a housewife's word, but 

 in every one's mouth — in the poet's as he sang, 

 the preacher's as he preached, and the people's 

 while they prayed. Surely, for this very reason, 

 if Shakspeare meant Hamlet to rant about a river, 

 the bard would never have made the king choose, 

 before all others, that very one which bore the 

 same name with the then commonest word in our 

 tongue : a tiny stream, moreover, which, if hardly 

 ever spoken of in these days of geographical know- 

 ledge, must have been much less known then to 

 Englishmen. Da. Rock. 



Buckland, Faringdon. 



Your correspondent J. S. W. well deserves the 

 thanks of all those of your readers who have taken 

 an interest in the discussion on the meaning of 

 eisell in Hamlet, for tlie able manner in which he 

 has summed up the evidence put forward by the 

 counsel on both sides. Perhaps he is correct in 

 his conclusion, that, of twelve good men and true, 

 nine would give their verdict for eisell being "a 

 river;" while but three would favour the "bitter 

 potion." Nevertheless, I must say, I think the 

 balance yet hangs pretty even, and I rather in- 

 cline myself to the latter opinion, for these reasons : 



1. There is no objection whatever, even in the 

 judgment of its enemies, against eisell meaning "a 

 bitter potion," except that they -prefer the river 

 as more to their taste ; for the objection of 

 Me. Causton I conceive to have no weight at all, 

 that " to drink up " can only be applied " to a 

 definite ijuantity ;" surely it may also mean, and 

 very naturally, to drink "without stint." And 

 eisell need not be taken as meaning nothing more 

 than "vinegar;" it may be a potion or medica- 

 ment of extreme bitterness, as in the lllth 



sonnet, and in Lydgate's Troy Boke quoted by 

 ]\Ir. Singek, such, that while it would be possible 

 to sip or drink it in small quantities, or diluted, 

 yet to swallow a quantity at a draught would be 

 almosc beyond endurance ; and hence, I submit, 

 the appropriateness of " drink up." 



2. There is this objection against eisell meaning 

 a river, — Would the poet who took a world-wide 

 illustration from Ossa, refer in the same passage 

 to an obscure local river for another illustration ? 

 Moreover it does not appear to be sufficient to 

 find any mere river, whose name resembles the 

 word in question, without showing also that there 

 is a propriety in Hamlet's alluding to that parti- 

 cular river, either on account of its volume of 

 water, its rapid flow, &c., or from its being in sight 

 at the time he spoke, or near at hand. 



Can any of your readers, who have Shakspeare 

 more at their fingers' ends than myself, instance 

 any exact parallel of this allusion of his to local 

 scenery, which, being necessarily obscure, must 

 more or less mar tlie universality, if I may so 

 speak, of his dramas. Could such instances be 

 pointed out (which I do not deny) or at least any 

 one exactly parallel instance, it would go far to- 

 wards reconciling myself at least to the notion 

 that eisell is the river Essel. H. C. K. 



Rectory, Hereford, July 28. 



LORD MAYOR NOT A PRIVT COUNCrLLOR. 



(Vol. iv., pp. 9. 137.) 



I will not attempt to follow all the statements of 

 L. M., because some of them are totally beside the 

 question, and others contradict each other. I shall 

 only observe that he totally mistakes my argument 

 when he says, as if in reply to me, that it is not 

 necessary to have the courtesy title of lor-d to be a 

 privy councillor. No one ever said any such thing. 

 What I said was this, that the Mayor of London, 

 like those of Dublin and York, had the courtesy 

 title of lord, and that this title of loi-d brought 

 with it the other courtesy designation of 7-ight 

 honorable, which latter being also (but not lihe- 

 ivise) the designation of privy councillors, had, as 

 I suppose, occasioned the error now predicated of 

 the Mayor of London being a privy councillor, 

 which, I repeat, he is no more than any Lord 

 John or Lady Jane, who have also the title of 

 Right Honorable. 



L. M., however, states as a matter of fact, that 

 " the Lord Mayor is always summoned to council 

 on the accession of a new sovereign." Now I 

 assert, and I think have proved in my former 

 note, that the Lord JMayor never was so summoned 

 to council. I now add that he never has on any 

 occasion entered the council chamber, that he has 

 never taken the oath nor performed any act of a 

 privy councillor, and that in short there is not the 



