I was recently re-examining a short letter written by Charles Darwin in
1860 to Asa Gray, since I had used an excerpt of it to discuss speech acts
and text type with my students. I began looking at the clause structures
and became puzzled by the relative clause in the passage quoted below
which is punctuated as a non-restrictive relative.  I began to wonder
whether this clause "who is not a convert" really has a restrictive force
to it and has been punctuated by Darwin in a way that would be
unconventional today. There is a clearly restrictive relative at the end
of the passage, so we see that Darwin does seem to make the distinction in
his punctuation.

"What you say about my book gratifies me most deeply, and I wish I could
feel all was deserved by me. I quite think a review from a man, who is not
an entire convert, if fair and moderately favourable, is in all respects
the best kind of review.... It is the highest possible gratification to me
to think that you have found my book worth reading and reflection; for you
and three others I put down in my own mind as the judges whose opinions I
should value most of all."

(1) How do you read "who is not a convert"?  Can you read it
non-restrictively?
(2) Were punctuation rules for restrictive vs. non-restrictive relative
clauses established by the mid-19th century?  Were/are there differences
between British and American punctuation of non-restrictive clauses?
(3) Could this instance be merely a Darwinian eccentricity?

I might add that I just went back to the Gutenberg Project page where I
originally read this letter,
<http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/2llcd10.txt> and I searched the
text for occurrences of "which" and found that the punctuation in Darwin's
correspondence is pretty regular, though there are a couple of relative
clauses set off by commas that I find difficult to read as
non-restrictive.

R. Michael Medley, Director
Intensive English Program
Professor of English
Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA 22802

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