And is not Sir Thomas Hammer quite correct in expression, when he alters the hemistich into "Wilt drink up _Nile_?" But to multiply examples on such a point would be idle. 14. It is now to be considered whether, supposing that the word might mean _a potion_ (whether of _vinegar_ or _wormwood_) or _a river_, the potion or the river is the more applicable to the passage in which it occurs. It cannot be denied that the whole passage is full of rant and extravagance. Laertes begins to rant, and Hamlet answers him in a similar strain: "Now pile your dust (says Laertes) upon quick and dead, Till of this flat a mountain you have made, T' o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head Of blue Olympus." This is surely extravagant enough. Hamlet retorts, in correspondent tone,-- "What is he whose grief _Bears such an emphasis_? whose phrase of sorrow _Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers_?" Then comes the struggles in which they are parted by the attendants after which Hamlet cries out with like "emphasis:" "Why I will fight with him upon this theme _Until my eye-lids can no longer wag_. ... I lov'd Ophelia; _forty thousand brothers_ Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum--what wilt thou do for her?" On which the king exclaims, with much reason, "O, he is mad, Laertes." Hamlet continues, as if to make his madness indisputable: "Zounds! show me what thoul't do: Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself? Woul't drink up _Esil_? eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw _Millions of acres on us_; till our ground, _Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thoul't mouth, I'll rant as well as thou_." The queen justly observes: "This is _mere madness_." Hamlet goes off, but maintains his extravagance of language to the last: "Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." If, then, a literary jury be required to decide this question, the point on which they have to give a verdict is, whether _to drink vinegar_ (or wormwood-wine) or _to drink up a river_ is more in consonance with the tenor of Hamlet's speech. Theobald indeed says, that "Hamlet is not proposing any _impossibilities_ to Laertes, such as drinking up a river would be, but rather seems to mean, Wilt thou resolve to do _things the most shocking and distasteful to human nature_?" But on what ground does this assertion rest? Laertes himself commences with what we may surely call an impossibility: "Till of this flat," &c.