"_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?