(Vol. ii., pp. 259. 299.)
When the learning and experience of such gentlemen as MR. SINGER and MR.
COLLIER fail to conclude a question, there is no higher appeal than to
plain common sense, aided by the able arguments advanced on each side.
Under these circumstances, perhaps you will allow one who is neither
learned nor experienced to offer a word or two by way of vote on the
meaning of the passage in the _Tempest_ cited by MR. SINGER. It appears to
me that to do full justice to the question the passage should be quoted
entire, which, with your permission, I will do.
"_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 compos'd 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 baseness
Had ne'er like executor. _I forget_;
_But_ these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labour(s),
Most busy(l)est when I do it."
The question appears to be whether "most busy" applies to "sweet thoughts"
or to Ferdinand, and whether the pronoun "it" refers to the act of
_forgetting_ or to "labour(s);" and I must confess that, to me, the whole
significancy of the passage depends upon the idea conveyed of the mind
being "most busy" while the body is being exerted. Every man with a spark
of imagination must many a time have felt this. In the most essential
particular, therefore, I think MR. SINGER is right in his correction but at
the same time agreeing with MR. COLLIER, that it is desirable not to
interfere with the original text further than is absolutely necessary, I
think the substitution of "labour" for "labours" is of questionable
expediency. What is the use of the conjunction "but" if not to connect the
excuse for the act of forgetting with the act itself?
Without intending to follow MR. COLLIER through the course of his argument,
I should like to notice one or two points. The usage of Shakspeare's day
admitted many variations from the stricter grammatical rules of our own;
but no usage ever admitted such a sentence as this,--for though
elliptically expressed, MR. COLLIER treats it as a sentence,--
"Most busy, least when I do it."
This is neither grammar nor sense: and I persist in believing that
Shakspeare was able to construct an intelligible sentence according to
rules as much recognised by custom then as now.
But, indeed, does not MR. COLLIER virtually admit that the text is
inexplicable in his very attempt to explain it? He sums up by saying "that
in fact, his toil is no toil, and that when he is 'most busy' he 'least
does it,'" which is precisely the reverse of what the text says, if it
express any meaning at all. I will agree with him in preferring the old
text to any other text where it gives a perfect meaning; but to prefer it
here, when the omission of a single letter produces an image at once {338}
noble and complete, would, to my mind, savour more of superstition than
true worship.
P.S. It should be observed that MR. COLLIER'S "least" is as much of an
alteration of the original text as MR. SINGER'S "busyest", the one adding
and the other omittng a letter. The folio of 1632, where it differs front
the first folio, will hardly add to the authority of MR. COLLIER himself.