[461] In regard to the admission of a comma before the verb, by the foregoing exception, neither the practice of authors nor the doctrine of punctuators is entirely uniform; but, where a considerable pause is, and must be, made in the reading, I judge it not only allowable, but necessary, to mark it in writing.  In W. Day’s “Punctuation Reduced to a System,” a work of no inconsiderable merit, this principle is disallowed; and even when the adjunct of the nominative is a relative clause, which, by Rule 2d below and its first exception, requires a comma after it but none before it, this author excludes both, putting no comma before the principal verb.  The following is an example:  “But it frequently happens, that punctuation is not made a prominent exercise in schools; and the brief manner in which the subject is there dismissed has proved insufficient to impress upon the minds of youth a due sense of its importance.”—­Day’s Punctuation, p. 32.  A pupil of mine would here have put a comma after the word dismissed.  So, in the following examples, after sake, and after dispenses:  “The vanity that would accept power for its own sake is the pettiest of human passions.”—­Ib., p. 75.  “The generous delight of beholding the happiness he dispenses is the highest enjoyment of man.”—­Ib., p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put the comma only where the conjunction is omitted.  W. Day separates them all, one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a plural verb, he inserts no point.  Example:  “Imagination is one of the principal ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm, and sensibility are also included.”—­Day’s Punctuation, p. 52.  If the points are to be put where the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after sensibility; and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set one there.  John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following instance:  “Reputation, virtue, and happiness depend greatly on the choice of companions.”—­Wilson’s Treatise on Punctuation, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed.  This is certainly a great error.  It gives us such punctuation as comports neither with the sense of three or more words in the same construction, nor with the pauses which they require in reading.  “John, James and Thomas are here,” is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have any other meaning.  Yet this is the way in which the rules of Cooper, Felton, Frost,