Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850

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 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 no more; secure of the approbation of those who (to use the words of an esteemed friend on another occasion) feel "that making an opaque spot in a great work transparent is not a labour to be scorned, and that there is a pleasant sympathy between the critic and bard—dead though he be—on such occasions, which is an ample reward."

    S.W. SINGER

Mickleham, Aug 30. 1850.

PUNISHMENT OF DEATH BY BURNING

(Vol. ii., pp. 6. 50. 90. 165.)

In the "NOTES AND QUERIES" of Saturday, the 10th of August, SENEX gives some account of the burning of a female in the Old Bailey, "about the year 1788."

Having myself been present at the last execution of a female in London, where the body was burnt (being probably that to which SENEX refers), and as few persons who were then present may now be alive, I beg to mention some circumstances relative to that execution, which appear to be worthy of notice.

Our criminal law was then most severe and cruel: the legal punishment of females convicted of high treason and petty treason was burning; coining was held to be high treason; and murder of a husband was petty treason.

I see it stated in the Gentleman's Magazine, that on the 13th of March, 1789,—

"The Recorder of London made his report to His Majesty of the prisoners under sentence of death in Newgate, convicted in the Sessions of September, October, November, and January (forty-six in number), fourteen of whom were ordered for execution; five of whom were afterwards reprieved."

The recorder's report in regard to these unfortunate persons had been delayed during the incapacity of the king; thus the report for four sessions had been made at once. To have decided at one sitting of council upon such a number of cases, must have almost been enough to overset the strongest mind. Fortunately, these reports are now abolished.

In the same number of the Gentleman's Magazine, under date the 18th of March, there is this statement,—

"The nine following malefactors were executed before the Debtors' Door at Newgate pursuant to their sentence, viz., Hugh Murphy and Christian Murphy alias Bowman, Jane Grace, and Joseph Walker, for coining. [Four for burglary, and one for highway robbery.] They were brought upon the scaffold, about half an hour after seven, and turned off about a quarter past eight. The woman for coining was brought out after the rest were turned off, and fixed to a stake and burnt; being first strangled by the stool being taken from under her."

This is the execution at which I was present; the number of those who suffered, and the burning of the female, attracted a very great crowd. Eight of the malefactors suffered on the scaffold, then known as "the new drop." After they were suspended, the woman, in a white dress, was brought out of Newgate alone; and after some time spent in devotion, was hung on the projecting arm of a low gibbet, fixed at a little distance from the scaffold. After the lapse of a sufficient time to extinguish life, faggots were piled around her, and over her head, so that her person was completely covered: fire was then set to the pile, and the woman was consumed to ashes.

In the following year, 1790, I heard sentence passed in the Criminal Court, in the Old Bailey, upon other persons convicted of coining: one of them was a female. The sentence upon her was, that she should be "drawn to the place of execution, and there burnt with fire till she was dead."

The case of this unfortunate woman, and the cruel state of the law in regard to females, then attracted attention. On the 10th of May, 1790, Sir Benjamin Hammett, in his place in the House of Commons, called the attention of that House to the then state of the law. He mentioned that it had been his official duty to attend on the melancholy occasion of the burning of the female in the preceding year (it is understood he was then one of the sheriffs of London), he moved for leave to bring in a bill to alter the law, which he characterised as—