“Pylades’ soul and mad Orestes’, was
    In these, if we believe Pythagoras”—­Cowley’s Poems, p. 3.

UNDER NOTE VII.—­DISTINCT SUBJECT PHRASES.

“To be moderate in our views, and to proceed temperately in the pursuit of them, is the best way to ensure success.”—­Murray’s Key, 8vo, p. 206.  “To be of any species, and to have a right to the name of that species, is all one.”—­Locke’s Essay, p. 300.  “With whom to will and to do is the same.”—­Jamieson’s Sacred History, Vol. ii, p. 22.  “To profess, and to possess, is very different things.”—­Inst., p. 156.  “To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, is duties of universal obligation.”—­Ib. “To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be large or small, and to be moved swiftly or slowly, is all equally alien from the nature of thought.”—­Ib. “The resolving of a sentence into its elements or parts of speech and stating the Accidents which belong to these, is called PARSING.”—­Bullion’s Pract.  Lessons, p. 9.  “To spin and to weave, to knit and to sew, was once a girl’s employment; but now to dress and catch a beau, is all she calls enjoyment.”—­Lynn News, Vol. 8, No. 1.

RULE XVII.—­FINITE VERBS.

When a Verb has two or more nominatives connected by or or nor, it must agree with them singly, and not as if taken together:  as, “Fear or jealousy affects him.”—­W.  Allen’s Gram., p. 133.  “Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds:  creation sleeps.”—­Young.  “Neither character nor dialogue was yet understood.”—­L.  Murray’s Gram., p. 151.

   “The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,
    Safest and seemliest by her husband stays.”—­Milton, P. L., ix, 267.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE XVII.

OBS. 1.—­To this rule, so far as its application is practicable, there are properly no exceptions; for, or and nor being disjunctive conjunctions, the nominatives are of course to assume the verb separately, and as agreeing with each.  Such agreement seems to be positively required by the alternativeness of the expression.  Yet the ancient grammarians seldom, if at all, insisted on it.  In Latin and Greek, a plural verb is often employed with singular nominatives thus connected; as,

   “Tunc nec mens mini, nec color
    Certa sede manent.”—­HORACE.  See W.  Allen’s Gram., p. 133.

[Greek:  “Ean de adelphos ae adelphae lumnoi huparchosi, kai leipomenoi osi taes ephaemerou trophaes."]—­James, ii. 15.  And the best scholars have sometimes improperly imitated this construction in English; as, “Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties.”—­DRYDEN’S PREFACE:  Brit.  Poets, Vol. iii, p. 168.  “Neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his [Plato’s] categories.”—­R.  W. EMERSON:  Liberator, No. 996.