It is both absurd and inconvenient to stand upon points.
Of how much consequence, however, Punctuation is, the student may form some idea, by considering the different effects which a piece of poetry, for instance, which he has been accustomed to regard as sublime or beautiful, will have, when liberties are taken with it in that respect.
Imagine an actor commencing Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, thus:—
“To be; or not to be that is. The question,” &c.
Or saying, in the person of Duncan, in Macbeth:
“This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air.”
Or as the usurper himself, exclaiming,
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got’st thou that goose? Look!”
