How different, and how superior, is the way of
Gordon; who, though he can be homely and familiar, never lays aside the
well-bred and courteous manners of a polished Age. In his writings, the
leading clauses of a sentence are distinguished by their colons: the minor
clauses, by their semicolons; the nice meaning of the details is
expressed, the pleasure and the convenience of his readers are alike
increased, by his right and elegant use of commas. The comma, with us, is
used as a loop or bracket, and for little else: by the more accurate
scholars of the last Age, it was employed to indicate a finer meaning; to
mark an emphasis, or an elision; to introduce a relative clause; to bring
out the value of an happy phrase, or the nice precision of an epithet. And
thus the authors of the great century of prose, that orderly and spacious
time, assembled their words, arranged their sentences, and marshalled them
into careful periods: without any loss to the subtile meaning of their
thought, or any sacrifice of vigour, they exposed their subject in a
dignified procession of stately paragraphs; and when the end is reached we
look back upon a perfect specimen of the writer's art.
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