Conrad and Ada. On the green bank of Arno's silver stream No flow'rs are on it, but the long thick grass Oh! what a sacred stillness breathes around Far in the distance Pisa's stately tow'rs, It is the Grand Duke's birth-day, and the shouts He found that she had died, and all the dreams Breathes a short pray'r, then lifts his eyes to Heav'n, J. C. B. be pretty broadly insinuated, that, considering the Editor's private prejudices, (which are something of the most untractable and obstinate,) the unquestionable merit of the “Guide" could alone have prevailed with such a rugged monster to admit even a puff collusive-praise by implication, or the rule of contraries. Lastly, there will anon appear in all the newspapers, (not excepting the "Weekly Chronicle,”) a conspicuous advertisement of the " Guide," with excerpts curiously culled from our review tagged to its nether extremity, and headed, "The Reviewers express their opinion of this work in the following terms:" and these excerpts will have this advantage, that they will, in all likelihood, be fragments (disjecta membra) of a review in esse, not in posse, as sometimes happens!" Quam parvá sapientiâ gullitur mundus," said old crabbed Oxenstiern; but the cynical diplomatist, though up to a thing or two in his own way, could not foresee the skill and tact necessary to persons thoroughly initiated in the esoteric mysteries of "The Trade."-ED. In the Essay on Punctuation in your Number for October, there is a theory of the points laid down, which appears to be at variance with the practice of our best writers, and the doctrine of our best philologians. This theory is, that "the purpose of points, or stops, in writing, is not to mark periods of graceful pause, but to distinguish sentences, the members of sentences, and the intersections of those members;" and it seems objectionable, both because it does not exhaust the system of punctuation which is universally adopted, and because that system is, in some respects, diametrically opposite to it. The fact is, that the point which we ought to use depends, except at the end of a sentence, very much on the pause which a correct reader would make at that place, and very little upon the grammatical construction. Thus, when we address a person familiarly, the pause following his name, or the word of ceremony used for it, is short, and by general practice, the comma is taken to represent it. But when the name or epithet of the person whom we address consists of more than two or three words, and is placed in the beginning of the sentence, then, after the invocation, we make a pause of some length, which is represented by a semicolon. If, however, the invocation be a little way on in the sentence, and therefore the pause which a correct reader would make after it be slight, this pause, as in the first case, is represented by a comma. Yet in all these cases the grammatical construction of the sentence is the same: the difference among them is in the rhetorical arrangement of the words; to which, according to the theory under review, the points have no relation. In the sentence, "Brutus, I do observe you now of late," &c. the speaker addresses his equal, and that without any indication that he considers him to be other than his equal. The pause, therefore, is short, and is denoted by a comma. When Othello addresses the Senate, his pause, after invoking them, is distinct and reverential: 1 ON PUNCTUATION." "Most potent, grave, and reverend Sig- My very noble and approved good masters; But when Belial, in his speech to the Infernal Council, commences abruptly, and throws in the invocation parenthetically, it is followed by a comma: "I should be much for open war, As not behind in hate, &c." The pause here is necessarily short. This principle is followed in the punctuation of the Collects, which, indeed, afford the most copious illustration of it. There, when the invocation is in the middle of the sentence, it is almost uniformly followed by a comma; when in the beginning, by a semicolon. That correct pronunciation demands different pauses in these cases will appear evident to any person who will endeavour to make either of them suit the other. Let him make the pause of a comma after the word earth, in the daily Collect for the King, and it has the appearance of indecent familiarity with the being addressed: let him make the pause of the semicolon after the word eternal, in the celebrated versicle in the burial office, next before the act of interment, and the pathetic and tremulous fervency which has been so much admired in that prayer has quite disappeared. These, and analogous sentences in Latin, are pointed, on the continent at least, according to the same rulesa circumstance not without weight, because it shows the general acceptation of the system. We thus see, that, to a certain extent, the choice of the points depends upon the rhetorical pause. The construction of these sentences is the same, whether they admit the comma or the semicolon. But, according to the theory under review, if the construction be similar, so ought the punctuation to be. The rules of correct pronunciation, however, de mand different pauses, and the grammatical order gives way to elocution. But besides their use in denoting the duration of pauses, and the intersections of sentences, (for I by no means deny their utility in this latter respect,) the points regulate, to a certain extent, the inflections of the voice. These inflections often occur, and are marked by points, where the pauses and intersections are too trivial to require such aid. Thus, in the sentence quoted in the Essay, "He reprobated, also, the odious, because unsatisfactory, task, of every day urging the redress of injuries." Here, although the comiñas before also and task represent scarcely even the slightest pause, they represent a very distinct modulation of the voice. Intonation, indeed, is denoted, not only by the points generally, but one of them, the mark of interrogation, seems intended to represent little else. Were this point intended to represent the length of a pause, or to show the grammatical relation between the various members of a sentence, it would be altogether useless, seeing that grammarians unanimously lay it down, that in neither of these respects does it give any accurate information. Its place, so far as they are concerned, may always be supplied by some one of the other points. Defective, however, or rather totally unfit as this mark is for denoting the grammatical order or the pause, it is of use in marking the inflection of the voice which ought to precede it. If it be objected that there could have been no great need to introduce a point, solely to distinguish one particular modulation of the voice from others, I shall not think myself obliged to defend its introduction very strenuously; but still, on the received theory, it has a use, however trivial, while on the other it has no use whatever. Could we divert it from its present application, to relieve the coinma of a part of its burden, it would no doubt be a good exchange. But the practice of the language is fixed, and we are happy in the want of an Academy. That our points represent very imperfectly the pauses and tones of voice I readily admit; but do they represent more correctly the syntac.tical intersections? Their number is so small, and the intersections, pauses, and intonations, are so various, that the one cannot be adequately represented by the other. In this respect, the grammatical order is not a whit more fortunate than the rhetorical. No person actually does point his sentences according to their grammatical currency. It would be intolerable. In the end of the second paragraph of the Essay, there is an example of such punctuation in the sentence already quoted, the effect of which is so unpleasant, that the author, in a note following it, findsit necessary to caution his readers against pointing with too great minuteness, even according to his own theory. But this sentence is a favourable specimen of the system of pointing after the natural or grammatical order. To shew this, I shall point the following period, first, according to the received notions, and then according to the new theory. In the usual way, it runs thus: "For, as if any of those had then been condemned, you would not now have transgressed; so, if you should now be condemned, others will not hereafter transgress." This is not the natural order of the sentence, because here the inference precedes the proposition whence it is deduced. But we may throw the sentence into its grammatical order, without altering a single word; and this makes it a fit example for our present purpose, because we may distribute the points through it, as if the natural order had been observed by the author. In doing so, the full point must be placed where the period ends grammatically, and the semicolon after the last word of the first member. This then will be the punctuation: "For, as if any of those had then been condemned; you would not now have transgressed, so if you should now be condemned, others will not hereafter transgress." There is something repulsive in the very look of so mangled a sentence. But how, except on the generallyreceived theory, are adverbs and adverbial phrases sometimes pointed off, and sometimes not,-how are commas sometimes inserted between the nominative and the verb, and sometimes not, or rather, how are they ever so placed,-in one word, how do the length and the number of members continually affect the punctuation? On the principle that grammar alone ought to regulate the points, these questions cannot be answered, except by saying that the universal practice of our language is erroneous. As spoken is earlier than written language, so it is evident must the situation of the rhetorical pauses be, to the nice discrimination of grammatical intersection. It is extremely probable, however, that in the most cultivated times of ancient literature, points were not used to designate either the one or the other. The various kinds of marks which we find in antique inscriptions are evidently placed without much regard either to the grammar or the pause. The sculptors seem to have had no general rule for placing them, except (which is perhaps the true case) they used them for the same purpose which is served in Hebrew by the elongation of certain final letters, to fill up spaces which would otherwise have been blank. Traces of grammatical or rhetorical punctuation in MSS. have not, I believe, been hitherto discovered. The dots with which we find some MSS. to abound are placed at the end of every word, and are obviously designed, not to mark the grammar or the elocution, but to separate words from each other; a practice very useful before the present mode of leaving spaces between them was introduced. Yet this practice, indispensable as it may appear to us, was but very imperfectly followed, even for some time after the invention of printing. In the great majority of ancient MSS. the words run on in a continued strain, from the beginning to the end of the book, the termination of pe riods, or paragraphs, being no ways distinguished. It is so in that venerable MS. the Alexandrian, which is as old as the Council of Nice*. In old books, printed even after some fixed notions of punctuation began to be conceived, the points are rare and irregular. Many marks, it is true, may be found in the pages especially of the Latin authors; but the slightest inspection shows that these are either marks of orthogra phical apocope or syncope, or are analogous to the Literarum Nexus of the Greeks. Thus the last and penult letters of the enclitical que are almost invariably represented by the mark which we now call semicolon. A dash drawn above a word denotes the omission of some of its medial letters, as Jacus for Jacobus, ecclia for ecclesia. This kind of syncope was very usual in the middle ages. The admirers of Petrarch know that it is on the determination of a word so spelled that the character of Laura, and the innocence or the guilt of his affection for her, are not a little founded. The termination of the dative and ablative plural of the three last Latin declensions is often marked by a figure resembling our ninth Arabic numeral. These marks, however, have for a long time been pretty generally discarded, and our modern system of punctuation has been superinduced. These observations on the points in general being premised, I must now claim your indulgence for a few remarks upon that one which was introduced the last, the misapplication of which, if not so great, are at least much more numerous than those of the others,-I mean the note of admiration. In the opinion laid down in the Essay, that this mark is too frequently used, I entirely concur; but I would feel inclined to compress its application within still narrower limits than your correspondent has fixed. Its only proper situations seem to be after exclamations and suspensive reflections or recollections, the usual, though not the indispensable, signs of which are the interjections. As for invocations, the comma, or the semicolon, as already remarked, ought to follow them. No sentence seems to be entitled to this point, unless it not only require an earnest modulation of the voice, but also be of an elliptical construction. To make this clear by an example, when we write "Oh for the swords of former time!" &c., we correctly use the note of admiration : we express an ardent wish in exclamatory and elliptic phrase. But when we • See Woide's Fac-simile. 1 write, "I wish I were where Helen lies," &c., we do not use this mark, because, though the wish here is as strong as in the other instance, yet the expression of that wish is full. It contains no ellipsis-no exclamation: it is a logical proposition. The reason why invocations have this mark so often is perhaps the not adverting to the difference between Oh, the interjection, and O, the sign of the vocative. Those beautiful phrases with which some persons so liberally garnish their speech being sometimes as dubious in their construction as in their meaning, may perhaps have increased the prevalence of the error. These expressions ought to be followed by the note of admiration only when they are used as powerful interjections. Thus Mr Campbell rightly points his heroine's words, "And I beheld, oh God! oh God! His life's blood oosing through the sod." The frequency with which this point is now used is extremely unpleasant. When a writer has made an acute observation, or rounded off a sounding period, he marks it out for the attention of his readers with one-sometimes, indeed, two notes of admiration. Even were the principle correct, the practice would, in nine cases out of ten, be indefensible, since the point is so frequently affixed to sentences which have little in them to command the reader's admiration. Thus in Roger's lines, as quoted in the Essay: "He grows in wisdom and in stature too! And as new scenes, new objects rise to view, Thinks nothing done, while ought re mains to do!" What possible cause of admiration is there here? Was this the only boy who grew bigger and more know. ing as he got older, or who, by degrees, began to look to higher scenes than his nursery afforded him? Had it been the other way-had the urchin grown less in size, and more infantine in mind, and had his connection with the nursery-maid become closer as he approached to majority, then indeed we might perhaps have passed without much censure the marking out to our notice of a period which contained intelligence so very re markable. But all here goes on in the usual course of things. Should we proceed thus, a few years will completely change our punctuation. The profound remarks which emanate from Exeter 'Change, on the natural history of the brute creationthe announcements of auctions and cheap sales-and the sign-boards of Joanna Southcot's chapels, may have as many such marks as the individuals interested may choose to affix,--but let scholars avoid the indecent profusion. All suspensive reflections require this point, because they ought to be pronounced with an exclamatory tone more or less subdued, and because their grammatical construction is highly elliptical. This suspended construction is often, in poetry at least, continued through several sentences. I observe, that, in practice, a difference has taken place between the punctuation of such sentences when the interjection is repeated, and when it is only understood. In the former case, the point of admiration is continued throughout; as in the song already quoted-" Oh for the swords of former time!" &c., while, in the latter, it is used much more sparingly. Thus, "Oh the joys of an evening Posada !" though elliptical throughout, has only the recurring quatrain marked with the note of admiration. I say, though elliptical throughout, because, although some verses in it may be considered logical prepositions, yet they seem much more poetical when viewed as suspensive reflections. When only a part of a sentence is to be marked with this point, the simple rule is to place it where the sentence ceases to be suspensive, and assumes a regular form. Thus Young, in his first Satire on Women: "But oh! the nymph that mounts above the skies, And gratis clears religion's mysteries, Resolv'd the Church's welfare to ensure, But takes in texts of Scripture at pic |