the infinitive to be governed by to, and not by the preceding verb, noun, or adjective, is plain from the following note, which he gives in his margin:  “The Scholar will best understand this, by being told that infinite or invariable Verbs, having neither Number, Person, nor Nominative Word belonging to them, are known or governed by the Preposition TO coming before them.  The Sign to is often understood; as, Bid Robert and his company (to) tarry.”—­Fisher’s New Gram., p. 95.

OBS. 9.—­The forms of parsing, and also the rules, which are given in the early English grammars, are so very defective, that it is often impossible to say positively, what their authors did, or did not, intend to teach.  Dr. Lowth’s specimen of “grammatical resolution” contains four infinitives.  In his explanation of the first, the preposition and the verb are parsed separately, as above; except that he says nothing about government.  In his account of the other three, the two words are taken together, and called a “verb, in the infinitive mode.”  But as he elsewhere calls the particle to a preposition, and nowhere speaks of any thing else as governing the infinitive, it seems fair to infer, that he conceived the verb to be the regimen of this preposition.[404] If such was his idea, we have the learned Doctor’s authority in opposition to that of his professed admirers and copyists.  Of these, Lindley Murray is doubtless the most famous.  But Murray’s twelfth rule of syntax, while it expressly calls to before the infinitive a preposition, absurdly takes away from it this regimen, and leaves us a preposition that governs nothing, and has apparently nothing to do with the relation of the terms between which it occurs.

OBS. 10.—­Many later grammarians, perceiving the absurdity of calling to before the infinitive a preposition without supposing it to govern the verb, have studiously avoided this name; and have either made the “little word” a supernumerary part of speech, or treated it as no part of speech at all.  Among these, if I mistake not, are Allen, Lennie, Bullions, Alger, Guy, Churchill, Hiley, Nutting, Mulligan, Spencer, and Wells.  Except Comly, the numerous modifiers of Murray’s Grammar are none of them more consistent, on this point, than was Murray himself.  Such of them as do not follow him literally, either deny, or forbear to affirm, that to before a verb is a preposition; and consequently either tell us not what it is, or tell us falsely; some calling it “a part of the verb,” while they neither join it to the verb as a prefix, nor include it among the auxiliaries.  Thus Kirkham:  “To is not a preposition when joined to a verb in this mood; thus, to ride, to rule; but it should be parsed with the verb, and as a part of it.”—­Gram. in Familiar Lect., p. 137.  So R. C. Smith: