I am quite unconscious of any purport in my remarks, other than they appear on paper; and I should be sorry indeed to accuse MR. SINGER of being "ignorant" of anything; but I venture to suggest that those young gentlemen of surpassing spirit, who ate crocodiles, _drank_ UP eisell, and committed other anomalies against nature in honor of their mistresses, belonged decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which he _drank_[9], though I never discovered that it was _drank up_ by him. He generally wore a doublet and breeches of satin, slashed and lined with coloured taffata; and walked about with a gilliflower in one hand, and his gloves in the other. His veritable portrait is extant, and is engraved in Mr. Knight's _Pictorial Shakspeare_.[10] It will be time enough to decide which of us has run his head against "a stumbling-block of his own making," when MR. SINGER shall have found a probable solution of his difficulty "by a parallelism in the poet's pages." H. K. STAPLE CAUSTON. Vassall Road, Brixton, Feb. 21. 1851. [Footnote 4: This deduction is not warranted by the _Vocab. della Crusca_, or any other Ital. Dic. to which I have had the opportunity of reference: and _Somner_ and _Lye_ are quite distinct on the A.-Sax. words, _Wermod_ and _Eisell_.] [Footnote 5: _Garden of Health_, 4to. London, 1633. The portions within the brackets were omitted by MR. SINGER.] [Footnote 6: _Via Recta ad Vitam Longam_, by Thomas Venner, M.D. 4to. London, 1660.] [Footnote 7: _Med. Dict._] [Footnote 8: A description of the rivers Yssel will be found in _Dict. Geograph. de la Martiniere_, v. ix. fo. 1739.] [Footnote 9: As the verb "to drink" was not limited to the act of bibition, but for MR. HICKSON'S decision against drinking up the "sea-serpent," it might yet become a question whether Hamlet's _eisell_ had not been a misprint for _eosol_ (asinus).] [Footnote 10: _Merchant of Venice_, Introduction.] {212} * * * * * Replies to Minor Queries.