er,
And you'll see your true love before the day's 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
_l
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