Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/580

 seems to require no further explanation. See Obs. 2d under Rule 2d, and Obs. 2d under Rule 5th.

OBS. 8.--The infinitive mood, a phrase, or a sentence, (and, according to some authors, the participle in ing, or a phrase beginning with this participle,) is sometimes the proper subject of a verb, being equivalent to a nominative of the third person singular; as, "To play is pleasant."--Lowth's Gram., p. 80. "To write well, is difficult; to speak eloquently, is still more difficult."--Blair's Rhet., p. 81. "To take men off from prayer, tends to irreligiousness, is granted."--Barclay's Works, i, 214. "To educate a child perfectly, requires profounder thought, greater wisdom, than to govern a state."--Channing's Self-Culture, p. 30. "To determine these points, belongs to good sense."--Blair's Rhet., p. 321. "How far the change would contribute to his welfare, comes to be considered."--''Id., Sermons''. "That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution."--Life of Schiller, p. 148. "That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', ii, 360. "For what purpose they embarked, is not yet known."--"To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of sin, is utterly impossible."--Dr. J. Owen.

"There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,   But drinking largely sobers us again."--Pope.

OBS. 9.--The same meaning will be expressed, if the pronoun it be placed before the verb, and the infinitive, phrase, or santance, after it; as, "It is pleasant to play,"--"It is difficult to write well;" &c. The construction of the following sentences is rendered defective by the omission of this pronoun: "Why do ye that which [it] is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?"--Luke, vi, 2. "The show-bread, which [it] is not lawful to eat, but for the priests only."--Ib., vi, 4. "We have done that which [it] was our duty to do."--Ib., xvii, 10. Here the relative which ought to be in the objective case, governed by the infinitives; but the omission of the word it makes this relative the nominative to is or was, and leaves to do and to eat without any regimen. This is not ellipsis, but error. It is an accidental gap into which a side piece falls, and leaves a breach elsewhere. The following is somewhat like it, though what falls in, appears to leave no chasm: "From this deduction, [it] may be easily seen how it comes to pass, that personification makes so great a figure."--Blair's Rhet., p. 155. "Whether the author had any meaning in this expression, or what it was, [it] is not easy to determine."--Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 298. "That warm climates should accelerate the growth of the human body, and shorten its duration, [it] is very reasonable to believe."--Ib., p. 144. These also need the pronoun, though Murray thought them complete without it.

OBS. 10.--When the infinitive mood is made the subject of a finite verb, it is most commonly used to express action or state in the abstract; as, "To be contents his natural desire."--Pope. Here to be stands for simple existence; or if for the existence of the Indian, of whom the author speaks, that relation is merely implied. "To define ridicule, has puzzled and vexed every critic."--''Kames, El. of Crit.'', i, 300. Here "to define" expresses an action quite as distinct from any agent, as would the participial noun; as, "The defining of ridicule," &c. In connexion with the infinitive, a concrete quality may also be taken as an abstract; as, "To be good is to be happy." Here good and happy express the quality of goodness and the state of happiness considered abstractly; and therefore these adjectives do not relate to any particular noun. So also the passive infinitive, or a perfect participle taken in a passive sense; as, "To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom."--"To appear discouraged, is the way to become so." Here the satisfaction and the discouragement are considered abstractly, and without reference to any particular person. (See Obs. 12th and 13th on Rule 6th.) So too, apparently, the participles doing and suffering, as well as the adjective weak, in the following example:

"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,   Doing or suffering."--Milton's Paradise Lost.

OBS. 11.--When the action or state is to be expressly limited to one class of beings, or to a particular person or thing, without making the verb finite; the noun or pronoun may be introduced before the infinitive by the preposition for: as, "For men to search their own glory, is not glory."--Prov., xxv, 27. "For a prince to be reduced by villany [sic--KTH] to my distressful circumstances, is calamity enough."--Translation of Sallust. "For holy persons to be humble, is as hard, as for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors."--TAYLOR: Priestley's Gram., p. 132; Murray's, 184. But such a limitation is sometimes implied, when the expression itself is general; as, "Not to know me, argues thyself unknown."--Milton. That is, "For thee not to know me." The phrase is put far, "Thy ignorance of me;" for an other's ignorance would be no argument in regard to the individual addressed. "I, to bear this, that never knew but better, is some burden."--Beauties of Shak., p. 327. Here the infinitive to bear, which is the subject of the verb is, is limited in sense by the pronoun I, which is put absolute in the nominative, though perhaps improperly; because, "For me to bear this," &c., will convey the same meaning, in a form much more common, and perhaps more grammatical. In the following couplet, there is an ellipsis of the infinitive; for the phrase, "fool with fool," means, "for fool to contend with fool," or, "for one fool to contend with an other:"

"Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor,   But fool with fool is barb'rous civil war." --Pope, Dunciad, B. iii, l. 175.

OBS. 12.--The objective noun or pronoun thus introduced by for before the infinitive, was erroneously