14. In his successes and his failures, in his greatness and his littleness, Burns is ever clear, simple, true, and glitters with no luster but his own.
15. The high-school course includes arithmetic, algebra, and geometry; grammar and composition; ancient and modern history; geography, natural history, and astronomy.
16. If Bacon could find time to write Shakespeare, Marlow, and Greene, I see no reason why he should not have written Ben Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and the whole Elizabethan drama.
17. Aristophanes, Boccacio, Moliére and Cervantes, Dickens and Mark Twain, and our weekly comic papers make us laugh anew over the same old story, told in different accents and in different syntax.
18. With one of his two boys or a friend, and a dog, Tennyson would walk afield for miles.
19. With one of his two boys, or a friend and a dog, Tennyson would walk afield for miles.
In No. 18 the comma before “and” cuts “dog” off from “friend,” and makes a group of “dog” and “one of his two boys or a friend.” It makes this group simply because the sense permits no other grouping. Thus the meaning of No. 18 is, that Tennyson was accompanied by a dog and a person (one of his boys or a friend).
In No. 19 another grouping is made, which says Tennyson was accompanied by one of his boys or by a friend and a dog.