四、西人對句讀之重視

（五年一月四日）

Punctilious Punctuation

Talking of the supreme importance of the comma, a correspondent states that Thomas Campbell once walked six miles to a printing office to have a comma in one of his poems changed into a semicolon. There is a remarkable resemblanee between this and the story of Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland, making a lengthy expedition to Dublin to have a semi-colon substituted for a colon.

—— London Evening Standard

〔中譯〕

謹(jǐn)小慎微之句讀

言及逗號之重要性，有一位記者報道：托馬斯·坎貝爾曾經(jīng)步行六英里，去一家印刷所，為的是要將他一篇詩作中之一逗號改成分號。另有一件事與此極其類似。愛爾蘭皇家天文學(xué)家維廉·哈密頓爵士也曾長途跋涉，去都柏林，為的是要將一分號改為冒號。

——《倫敦標(biāo)準(zhǔn)晚報》

此二則甚有趣。人之視句讀如是其重也！此與“吟成一個字，捻斷幾根髭”，同一精神，同一作用。