6. The comma divydes the least partes of the period, and is pronunced in reading with a short sob.
7. The parenthesis divydes in the period a sentence interlaced on sum occurrences quhilk coheres be noe syntax with that quhilk preceedes and followes; as, for exemple of beath, and to conclud this treatesse:
Bless, guyd, advance, preserve, prolong Lord (if thy pleasur be)
Our King and Queen, and keep their seed thy name to magnifie.
[NOTES.]
The foregoing Tract is one of great interest, not only on account of its intrinsic merit, but also for the racy style of writing adopted by its author. We find him continually garnishing his language with such idiomatic and colloquial expressions as the following:—“Quhae’s sillie braine will reache no farther then the compas of their cap” (page [2]); and again, “but will not presume to judge farther then the compasse of my awn cap” (p. [20]). He observes of the printers and writers of his age that they care “for noe more arte then may win the pennie” (p. [2]), and on the same page he says, “quhiles I stack in this claye,” which appears to be equivalent to our term “stuck in the mud.” At p. [3] he says, “and it wer but a clod;” at p. [14], “neither daer I, with al the oares of reason, row against so strang a tyde;” and again, on p. [18], we find reason under another aspect, thus, “noe man I trow can denye that ever suked the paepes of reason.”
It seems that the expression, Queen’s English, is by no means of modern date, as we have it as the king’s language at p. [2].
Hume laments, in his Dedication, the uncertainty of the orthography prevailing at the time he writes, and yet we find him spelling words several different ways, even within the compass of a single sentence, without being able to lay the blame upon the printers; thus we find him writing judgement on p. [11], judge p. [8], and judg p. [33], but juge p. [18]; and there are numberless other instances that it would be tedious to enumerate. Again, the author uses a mixture of Scotch and English, so we have sometimes ane and sometimes one; nae on page [1] and noe on p. [2]; mare and mast, and more and most, even in the same sentence (p. [30]); and two is spelt in three different ways, tuae, tuo, and tuoe.