The comma, beyond question I believe, has been derived from the short oblique line which, both in manuscripts and in early printed books, is continually seen to divide portions of sentences.
The colon is of very old date, derived from the κωλον of the Greeks, the part of a period. In printing, we find it in the Mazarine Bible soon after 1450; and in the block books, believed to be of still earlier date.
Herbert, in his edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities, p. 512., notices the first semicolon he had met with in an edition of Myles Coverdale's New Testament, printed in 1538 by Richard Grafton. It was in the Dedication, and, he says, a solitary instance in the book. The only semicolon he subsequently met with, was in a book printed by Thomas Marshe in 1568, on Chess. Ibid. p. 358.
Herbert says, both seem to have been used accidentally.
Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie, 4to., 1589, in his chapter of "Cesure," says:—
"The ancient reformers of language invented these names of pauses, one of lesse leasure than another, and such several intermissions of sound, to serve (besides easement to the breath) for a treble distinction of sentences or parts of speech, as they happened to be more or lesse perfect in sense. The shortest pause, or intermission, they called comma, as who would say a piece of a speech cut off. The second they called colon, not a piece, but as it were a member, for his larger length, because it occupied twice an much time as the comma. The third they called periodus, for a complement or full pause, and as a resting place and perfection of so much former speech as had been uttered, and from whence they needed not to passe any further, unless it were to renew more matter to enlarge the tale."
The "three pauses, comma, colon, and periode," with the interrogative point, appear to have been all which were known to Puttenham.
Puttenham's Arte of Poesie has been already mentioned as printed in 1589. In the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, printed by W. Ponsonby in the very next year, 1590, the semicolon may be seen in the first page.
A book printed at Edinburgh in 1594 has not the semicolon; the use of it had not, apparently, arrived in Scotland.
That an earlier use of the semicolon had been made upon the Continent is probable. It occurs in the Sermone di Beato Leone Papa, 4to., Flor. 1485, the last point in the book.