Perhaps the superstition may have come before you already; but not having met with it myself, I thought it might be equally new to others.

H.J.

Sheffield.

* * * * *

Folk Lore Rhymes.—­

  “Find odd-leafed ash, and even-leafed clover,
  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
    lest.  Not catching the poet’s meaning, he printed,—­