"I forget,"--
and then he adds, _by way of excuse_,--
"_But_ the sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy when least I do it."
More busy in thought when idle, than in labour when employed. The cessation
from labour was favourable to the thoughts that made it endurable.
Malone quarrelled with the word "but", for which he would have substituted
"and" or "for". But in the _apologetic_ sense which I would confer upon the
last two lines of Ferdinand's speech, the word "but", at their
commencement, becomes not only appropriate but necessary.