Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/360

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. in. APRIL 15, 1905.

passage would have been completely altered. Again, no one with an ear for rhythm could have tolerated the phrase " Just to see earth " in a stanza of which the prosody is essentially anti-trochaic. The stately march of the iambus is exactly what the spirit of the phrase requires, and no other collocation of words could have conveyed so precisely, so emphatically, and so euphoniously the writer's meaning. W. F. PEIDEAUX.

The opponents of the split infinitive are confronted with sentences like "It had greatly pleased him," and are then asked, " If this is correct, why cannot we say, ' It seemed to greatly please him'?" The only answer forthcoming, apart from the ob- jection that the construction is of recent development, implies that the to is more closely connected with its infinitive than the auxiliary verb with its infinitive or participle. But the closeness of this union is evidently not felt by the majo- rity of English speakers at the present day. Indeed, in certain combinations, such as " I am to take," " I have to get," it may be asserted that the to is felt to belong more to the preceding word than to the infinitive. The justification of this feeling lies in the fact that "am to," "have to," can be quite naturally replaced by a word like " must," which requires no to whatever. " He said I was to go away at once" is a perfectly natural and perfectly correct reported ver- sion of the command ''Go away at once." In like manner the request " Kindly go away," or " Kindly take this prescription to the chemist's," becomes, "He said I was to kindly go away," " He said I was to kindly take a prescription, which he gave me, to the chemist's." This example shows how natur- ally the reprobated construction may arise. The form " He asked me to kindly go away " is preferable to " He asked me kindly to go away," because the latter might equally well mean that the manner of his asking was kind. Thus Prof. Saintsbury writes in his 'History of Criticism' (i. 56), "In details we may fail fully to understand them," where a split infinitive would have prevented all risk of fully being wrongly construed with fail. The theory of clearness advanced at p. 17, ante, is no doubt the right one to account for the favour which the split infinitive has found with the many. With further reference to p. 17, it may be pointed out that the split infinitive in the passive would be " to thoroughly be spoilt," not " to be thoroughly spoilt."

Clearness, and the backward attraction exercised over the to by some antecedent

word these are the principal reasons for continuing to split our infinitives. There are also the analogies brought forward at pp. 51-2. And it may further be urged in defence of the newer construction that it is a means of varying the word-order of the sentence, variety being one of the chief objects to be attained in writing prose.

There is a very reasonable discussion of the split infinitive in the late Prof. Earle's 'English Prose' (1890), pp. 182-6.

As regards Dr. Johnson's censure of phrases like " the custom is a bad oi\e"j(ante t p. 151), it may be mentioned that Johnson himself, as reported by Boswell, under date October, 1774 (Globe edition, p. 279), said of Wales : "Instead of bleak and barren mountains there were bleak and fertile ones."

LIONEL R. M. STEACHAN.

Heidelberg.

"To rightly understand the matter," "To correctly diagnose a case," "To eloquently plead a cause," seem to me as good as " The right understanding of the matter," &c., and compare colloquial English other day.

T. WILSON.

Harpenden.

MASONS' MAEKS (10 th S. iii. 228). Masons 7 marks are now generally supposed to have served the purpose of identifying work done that is, of distinguishing the particular stone worked by the mason to whom that mark had been assigned. No evidence has, I think, been discovered of their having had a deeper signification, as it has been con- jectured, traceable to the religious character of associated masons in early times. They have been found in Rome, Pompeii, Greece, Algeria, Cairo, in the Jewish Temple of Onias in the Land of Goshen, on the ancient walls of Jerusalem, in Persia and Syria. The late Dr. Murray, of the Graeco - Roman Department, British Museum, informed me that there is a very valuable memoir on the subject of masons' marks in Pompeii, Rome, Perugia, and Sicily, by Otto Richter, 'Antika- Steinmatzzeichen ' (Berlin, 1885), with three plates, which was issued as the fifty-fourth ' Prograrnm zum Winckelmannsfeste.' He added that, so far as he knew, there is no other authority of any consequence on the subject. But he surely could not have been aware of several valuable English contribu- tions upon the question. The first descrip- tion of masons' marks was given by Mr. George Godwin, the former editor of The Builder, in Archceologia, vol. xxx.; and in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1868-9, pp. 135-43) a very