_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 Letanye of the Lyf and Passion of our Lorde Jesu Criste_, edited from a MS. (No. 546.) in the library at Lambeth, by Mr. Maskell, _Monumenta Ritualia_, ii. 252., comes this entreaty:-- "For thi thirste and tastyng of gall and _eysyl_, graunte us to tast 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 knowledge, 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 the 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 incline 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 MR. CAUSTON I conceive to have no weight at all, that "to drink up" can only be applied "to a definite quantity;" 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 medicament of extreme bitterness, as in the 111th sonnet, and in Lydgate's _Troy Boke_ quoted by MR. SINGER, 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 almost beyond endurance; and hence, I submit, the appropriateness of "drink up."