Re: What is this comma for?

On Sep 3, 10:51 am, Frederick Williams <"Frederick
Williams"@antispamhotmail.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
The last sentence of the fifth paragraph of Mary Shelley's _Matilda_
reads:

He was sent to Eton and afterwards to college; and allowed from
childhood the free use of large sums of money; thus enjoying from
his earliest youth the independence which a boy with these
advantages, always acquires at a public school.

What is that comma for?

I am referring to the text in _The Mary Shelley Reader_, editors B T
Bennett and C E Robinson, OUP.

--
Remove "antispam" and ".invalid" for e-mail address.
"He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and shall be repaid,"
said Mrs Fairchild, hastily slipping a shilling into the poor woman's
hand.

In Mary Shelley's day, punctuation was used for rhetorical, rather
than grammatical purposes, viz. to assist the reader in reading the
piece of writing aloud, to indicate pauses and the extent of the
pauses. The abundance of semicolons in the previous part of the
sentence bears this out. Most moderns would use only commas. Indeed,
most moderns wouldn't use such long, winding, 'snowball' sentences,
preferring to break down the above content into shorter sentences.

.

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