“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 called by Priestley, “the subject of the affirmation;” (Gram., p. 132;) and Murray, Ingersoll, and others, have blindly copied the blunder.  See Murray’s Gram., p. 184; Ingersoll’s, 244.  Again, Ingersoll says, “The infinitive mood, or part of a sentence, is sometimes the subject of a verb, and is, therefore, its NOMINATIVE.”—­Conversations on English Gram., p. 246.  To this erroneous deduction, the phraseology used by Murray and others too plainly gives countenance:  “The infinitive mood, or part of a sentence, is sometimes put as the nominative case to the verb.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 144; Fisk’s, 123; Kirkham’s, 188; Lennie’s, 99; Bullions’s, 89; and many more.  Now the objective before the infinitive may not improperly be called the subject of this form of the verb, as the nominative is, of the finite; but to call it “the subject of the affirmation,” is plainly absurd; because no infinitive, in English, ever expresses an affirmation.  And again, if a whole phrase or sentence is made the subject of a finite verb, or of an affirmation, no one word contained in it, can singly claim this title.  Nor can the whole, by virtue of this relation, be said to be “in the nominative case;” because, in the nature of things, neither phrases nor sentences are capable of being declined by cases.

OBS. 13.—­Any phrase or sentence which is made the subject of a finite verb, must be taken in the sense of one thing, and be spoken of as a whole; so that the verb’s agreement with it, in the third person singular, is not an exception to Rule 14th, but a construction in which the verb may be parsed by that rule.  For any one thing merely spoken of, is of the third person singular, whatever may be the nature of its parts.  Not every phrase or sentence, however, is fit to be made the subject of a verb;—­that is, if its own import, and not the mere expression, is the thing whereof we affirm.  Thus Dr. Ash’s example for this very construction, “a sentence made the subject of a verb,” is, I think, a palpable solecism:  “The King and Queen appearing in public was the cause of my going.”—­Ash’s Gram., p. 52.  What is here before the verb was, is no “sentence;” but a mere phrase, and such a one as we should expect to see used independently, if any regard were had to its own import.  The Doctor would tell us what “was the cause of his going:”  and here he has two nominatives, which are equivalent to the plural they; q.d., “They appearing in public was the cause.”  But such a construction is not English.  It is an other sample of the false illustration which grammar receives from those who invent the proof-texts which they ought to quote.