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.”
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where got’st thou that goose? Look!”
Or in the character of Norval, in the tragedy of Douglas, giving this account of himself and his origin:
“My name is Norval. On the Grampian hills My father feeds.”
In short, Punctuation is the soul of Grammar, as Punctuality is that of business.
Perhaps somebody or other may take advantage of what we have said, to prove both Punctuation and Punctuality _immaterial_. No matter.
How very punctual the present Ministers are! how well they _keep their appointments_!
We have now said as much as we think it necessary to say on the head of English Grammar. We shall conclude our labours with an “Address to Young Students;” and as to the question, what that has to do with our subject, we shall leave it to be settled by Lindley Murray, whose example, in this respect, we follow. All we shall observe is, that in our opinion, advice concerning manners stands in the same relation to a Comic English Grammar, as instruction in morals does to a Serious one. For the remarks which it will now be our business to make, we bespeak the indulgence of our elder readers, and the attention of such as are of tender age.
Having attentively perused the foregoing pages, you will be desirous, it is to be presumed, of carrying still further those comical pursuits in which, with both pleasure and profit to yourselves, you have been lately engaged. Should such be your laudable intention, you will learn, with feelings of lively satisfaction, that it is one, in the accomplishment of which, thanks to Modern Taste, you will find encouragement at every step. The literature of the day is professedly comic, and of the few works which are not made ludicrous by the design of their authors, the majority are rendered so in spite of it. In the course of your reading, however, you will be frequently brought into contact with hackney-coachmen, cabmen, lackeys, turnkeys, thieves, lawyers’ clerks, medical students, and other people of that description, who are all very amusing when properly viewed, as the monkeys and such like animals at the Zoological Gardens are, when you look at them through the bars of their cage. But too great familiarity with persons of this class is sure to breed contempt, not for them and their manners, but for the usages and modes of expression adopted in parlours and drawing-rooms, that is to say, in good society. Nay, it is very likely to cause those who indulge in it to learn various tricks and eccentricities, both of behaviour and speech, for “It is certain, that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another.” Shakspere.