“Liberal, not lavish, is kind Nature’s hand.”—­Beattie.

    “’Tis certain he could write, and cipher too.”—­Goldsmith.

EXCEPTION III.—­ALTERNATIVE OF WORDS.

When there is merely an alternative of names, or an explanatory change of terms, the comma is usually inserted; as, “We saw a large opening, or inlet.”—­W.  Allen.  “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles?”—­Cor., ix, 5.

EXCEPTION IV.—­CONJUNCTION UNDERSTOOD.

When the conjunction is understood, the comma is inserted; and, if two separated words or terms refer alike to a third term, the second requires a second comma:  as, “Reason, virtue, answer one great aim.”—­L.  Murray, Gram., p. 269.

   “To him the church, the realm, their pow’rs consign.”—­Johnson.

    “She thought the isle that gave her birth. 
    The sweetest, wildest land on earth.”—­Hogg.

RULE V.—­WORDS IN PAIRS.

When successive words are joined in pairs by conjunctions, they should be separated in pairs by the comma; as, “Interest and ambition, honour and shame, friendship and enmity, gratitude and revenge, are the prime movers in public transactions.”—­W.  Allen.  “But, whether ingenious or dull, learned or ignorant, clownish or polite, every innocent man, without exception, has as good a right to liberty as to life.”—­Beattie’s Moral Science, p. 313.

   “Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
    O’erspread with snares the crowded maze of fate.”—­Dr. Johnson.

RULE VI.—­WORDS PUT ABSOLUTE.

Nouns or pronouns put absolute, should, with their adjuncts, be set off by the comma; as, “The prince, his father being dead, succeeded.”—­“This done, we parted.”—­“Zaccheus, make haste and come down.”—­“His proctorship in Sicily, what did it produce?”—­Cicero.

   “Wing’d with his fears, on foot he strove to fly,
    His steeds too distant, and the foe too nigh”
        —­Pope, Iliad, xi, 440.

RULE VII.—­WORDS IN APPOSITION.

Words in apposition, (especially if they have adjuncts,) are generally set off by the comma; as, “He that now calls upon thee, is Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe.”—­Johnson.  “LOWTH, Dr. Robert, bishop of London, born in 1710, died in 1787.”—­Biog.  Dict. “HOME, Henry, lord Kames.”—­Ib.

   “What next I bring shall please thee, be assur’d,
    Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,
    Thy wish exactly to thy heart’s desire.”—­Milton, P. L., viii, 450.

    “And he, their prince, shall rank among my peers.”—­Byron.