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.: