As a college student I wrote at least one A paper and an exam on
_Gulliver’s Travels_, but I never actually read the book until now.  I
wish I had read it while I was in school because there are a lot of
questions I’d like to ask of someone knowledgeable in the work and the
period, and I haven’t been able to find answers to them on the Web,
although there is certainly plenty of material on this work and its
author.

Here’s one:  Swift’s use of commas.

It is hardly remarkable that writing styles have changed across two
continents and cultures and 277 years since the work was published,
nor do I suppose that Jonathan Swift’s style of punctuation was in any
way unique for his time and place.  What I am curious about is
something specific:  I would like to see the rules he was following. 
What precise rules of grammar and punctuation would he have been
taught with respect to the use of commas?  I am looking for a set of
rules on the proper use of commas in 18th century English and not an
ex post facto inference of a pattern derived from his writing; I can
do that myself.  If the rule was to follow Latin grammar, then I would
like to see what was considered at the time to be Latin’s rules for
the use of commas.  I could not help noticing that the patterns in his
writing seemed to resemble punctuation in German more closely than
punctuation in contemporary American or even British English.

Here is a sample.  These passages are taken from Chapter V and are
part of a lengthy and almost too-scathing-to-be-satirical disquisition
on the legal profession, addressed by our narrator Gulliver to the
king of the equine Houyhnhnms.

“I said, there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth
in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white
is black, and black is white, according as they are paid.  To this
society all the rest of the people are slaves. . . .  It is a maxim
among these lawyers, that whatever has been done before, may legally
be done again; and therefore they take special care to record all the
decisions formerly made against common justice, and the general reason
of mankind. . . .  It is likewise to be observed, that this society
has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can
understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take
special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very
essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will
take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors
for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred
miles off.”

(Footnote:  This work was the source of the term “Yahoo.”  The Yahoos
are the despicable brutes of humans, fit for nothing but menial labor,
at the bottom of the social scale in the land of the Houyhnhnms, who
appear to represent an ideal of virtue and reason.)

The answer I am looking for is not

- commentary on the fact that language changes
- explanation of the meaning and use of the commas in the passage
- information about rules of grammar and punctuation in modern English
- a repunctuation of the passage according to modern rules

I simply want to know what rules Swift was obeying when he punctuated
his text in that fashion.  If you had asked him, “See this comma?  By
what rule did you put it there?,” then, assuming that he knew his
grammar (which, as a well-educated man of his time, he undoubtedly
did), what would he have cited in response?  The answer almost
certainly has to come from 18th-century educational materials or
information derived from them.

Thank you,
Apteryx

Robert Monteith probably summed up the contemporary rules of
punctuation in his book of 1704. Unfortunately, there does not seem to
be an electronic text available. One can read Swift's letter to Harley
concerning the establishment of an Academy to reform English. It deals
mainly with the eradication words and phrases that displeased Dean
Swift.


Punctuation in English since 1600
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/punctuation_hist.html

"It was Ben Jonson, in his /English Grammar, /a work composed about
1617 and published posthumously in 1640, who first recommended
syntactical punctuation in England. An early example is the 1625
edition of Francis Bacon's /Essayes; /and from the Restoration onward
syntactical punctuation was in general use. Influential treatises on
syntactical punctuation were published by Robert Monteith in 1704 and
Joseph Robertson in 1795. Excessive punctuation was common in the 18th
century: at its worst it used commas with every subordinate clause and
separable phrase. Vestiges of this attitude are found in a handbook
published in London as late as 1880."


*A Brief History of English Usage*
(in: Webster?s Dictionary of English Usage, Merriam-Webster Inc.
Publishers, Springfield, Mass., 1989)
http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/data/B_HIST_EU.html

""Bullokar, out of his interest in regularizing and reforming, had
been moved to write a grammar of English. And the vocabulary
controversy?the introduction of inkhorn terms by the enrichers and the
revival of English archaisms by the purists (of whom the poet Edmund
Spenser was one)."
 [...]    
"More grammar books were also published at this time. Ben Jonson's
appeared posthumously in 1640. It is short and sketchy and is intended
for the use of foreigners. Its grammar is descriptive, but Jonson hung
his observations on a Latin grammatical framework. It also seems to be
the first English grammar book to quote the Roman rhetorician
Quintilian's dictum ''Custom is the most certain mistress of
language.""
[...]
"There was evidently a considerable amount of general interest in
things grammatical among men of letters, for Addison, Steele, and
Swift all treated grammar in one way or another in /The Tatler/ and
/The Spectator/ in 1710, 1711, and 1712. In 1712 Swift published yet
another proposal for an English academy (it came within a whisker of
succeeding): John Oldmixon attacked Swift's proposal in the same year.
Public interest must have helped create a market for the grammar books
which began appearing with some frequency about this same time. And if
controversy fuels sales, grammarians knew it: they were perfectly*
*willing to emphasize their own advantages by denigrating their
predecessors, sometimes in abusive terms."


*Some Benchmarks**
On the Way to Our Present-Day Rules*
http://www.m-w.com/undcon/gilman.htm

"*1700 *   A schoolmaster named A. Lane publishes the first grammar
intended to teach English to native speakers. He claims that "the true
End and Use of /Grammar/ is how to speak and write well and learnedly
in a Language already known, according to the unalterable Rules of
right Reason."

*1712 *   Jonathan Swift publishes his proposal for the establishment
of an English Academy."


MISCELLANEOUS
http://www.partnership.mmu.ac.uk/punctuation/Misc.html

"Pointing is the disposal of speech into certain members for more
articulate and distinct reading and circumstantiating of writs and
papers. It rests wholly and solely on concordance, and necessitates a
knowledge of grammar. (Robert Monteith)"


Spectator Text Project: Complete Tatler
http://tabula.rutgers.edu/tatler/

*Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745. Proposal for Correcting, Improving and
Ascertaining the English Tongue; in a Letter To the Most Honourable
Robert Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer of Great
Britain.*
http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=SwiTong.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all


SEARCH TERMS

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=18th+Century+English+grammar
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Swift+English+Academy+Tatler
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=punctuation+English+history
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Monteith+punctuation

hlabadie-ga

Many thanks, hlabadie.  Just what I wanted to know.

Apteryx

Evidently, it was the custom since Ben Jonson's The English Grammar to
punctuate with commas every subordinate clause.

"It was Ben Jonson, in his English Grammar, a work composed about 1617
and published posthumously in 1640, who first recommended syntactical
punctuation in England. An early example is the 1625 edition of
Francis Bacon's Essayes; and from the Restoration onward syntactical
punctuation was in general use. Influential treatises on syntactical
punctuation were published by Robert Monteith in 1704 and Joseph
Robertson in 1795. Excessive punctuation was common in the 18th
century: at its worst it used commas with every subordinate clause and
separable phrase. Vestiges of this attitude are found in a handbook
published in London as late as 1880."

Punctuation in English since 1600
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/punctuation_hist.html


It is notable that Swift had proposed that an English Academy be
founded to regularize English.


hlabadie-ga

Howdy, Apteryx! 

Thought you might appreciate this, especially the last sentence:

"Just as we don't wander about speaking Shakespeare's English on the
street (unless we're theater geeks, in which case we should prepare to
be beaten on by the jocks during lunch break), neither do we punctuate
exactly as we did in the past. Punctuation is still on the move, as
each era and medium places its own mark (get it? Huh?) on the format.
In the 18th century, for example, every subordinate clause, and
separable phrase, was separated by a comma, whether, in fact, the
sentence, as a whole, needed that many commas, or not. This may
explain why so much writing of the time gives modern readers a
headache; reading it is like driving a car solely by popping the
clutch."

http://www.scalzi.com/millittleinvention.htm

Excellent!  So, hlabadie, why don't you post your response as the
answer?  I think you've got it.  I read the whole entry you cited and
consider it to be an entirely satisfactory explanation.

Hey there, Pink--what an interesting page you steered me to!  Thank
you for the link not just to facts but also to commentary, and a rich
trove of other essays as well.  You must know all the choicest spots
on the Web.

Thank you,
Apteryx

Happy to have been helpful.

Thanks for the rating.

hlabadie-ga