Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 | Page 4

over."
If you wish to see your lover, throw salt on the fire every morning for
nine days, and say--
"It is not salt I mean to burn, But my true lover's heart I mean to turn;
Wishing him neither joy nor sleep, Till he come back to me and speak."
"If you marry in Lent, You will live to repent."
WEDSECNARF.
* * * * *
EMENDATION OF A PASSAGE IN THE "TEMPEST."
Premising that I should approach the text of our great poet with an
almost equal degree of awful reverence with that which characterises
his two latest editors, I must confess that I should not have the same
respect for evident errors of the printers of the early editions, which
they have occasionally shown. In the following passage in the
_Tempest_, Act i., Scene 1., this forbearance has not, however, been
the cause of the very unsatisfactory state in which they have both left it.
I {260} must be indulged in citing at length, that the context may the
more clearly show what was really the poet's meaning:--
"Enter FERDINAND bearing a Log.

"_Fer._ There be some sports are painful; and their labour Delight in
them sets off; some kinds of baseness Are nobly undergone; and most
poor matters Point to rich ends. This my mean task Would be as heavy
to me, as odious; but The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead,
And makes my labours pleasures: O! she is Ten times more gentle than
her father's crabbed; And he's composed of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, Upon a sore injunction:
My sweet mistress Weeps when she sees me work; and says such
business Had never like executor. I forget: But these sweet thoughts do
even refresh my labours; Most busy lest when I do it."
Mr. Collier reads these last two lines thus--
"But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours; Most busy, least
when I do it."
with the following note--
"The meaning of this passage seems to have been misunderstood by all
the commentators. Ferdinand says that the thoughts of Miranda so
refresh his labours, that when he is most busy he seems to feel his toil
least. It is printed in the folio 1623,--
'Most busy lest when I do it,'
--a trifling error of the press corrected in the folio 1632, although
Theobald tells us that both the oldest editions read lest. Not catching
the poet's meaning, he printed,--
'Most busy-less when I do it,'
and his supposed emendation has ever since been taken as the text;
even Capell adopted it. I am happy in having Mr. Amyot's concurrence
in this restoration."
Mr. Knight adopts Theobald's reading, and Mr. Dyce approves it in the
following words:--

"When Theobald made the emendation, 'Most busy-_less_,' he
observed that 'the corruption was so very little removed from the truth
of the text, that he could not afford to think well of his own sagacity for
having discovered it.' The correction is, indeed, so obvious that we may
well wonder that it had escaped his predecessors; but we must wonder
ten times more that one of his successors, in a blind reverence for the
old copy, should re-vitiate the text, and defend a corruption which
outrages language, taste, and common sense."
Although at an earlier period of life I too adopted Theobald's supposed
emendation, it never satisfied me. I have my doubts whether the word
busyless existed in the poet's time; and if it did, whether he could
possibly have used it here. Now it is clear that labours is a misprint for
_labour_; else, to what does "when I do _it_" refer? Busy lest is only a
typographical error for _busyest_: the double superlative was
commonly used, being considered as more emphatic, by the poet and
his contemporaries.
Thus in Hamlet's letter, Act ii. Sc. 2.:
"I love thee best, O most best."
and in _King Lear_, Act ii. Sc. 3.:
"To take the basest and most poorest shape."
The passage will then stand thus:--
"But these sweet thoughts, do even refresh my labour, Most busiest
when I do it."
The sense will be perhaps more evident by a mere transposition,
preserving every word:
"But these sweet thoughts, most busiest when I do My labour, do even
refresh it."
Here we have a clear sense, devoid of all ambiguity, and confirmed by

what precedes; that his labours are made pleasures, being beguiled by
these sweet thoughts of his mistress, which are busiest when he labours,
because it excites in his mind the memory of her "weeping to see him
work." The correction has also the recommendation of being effected in
so simple a manner as by merely taking away two superfluous letters. I
trust I need say