is not English; though it might be, if either to were any thing else than a preposition:  as, “Now set to to learn your lesson.”  This broad exception, therefore, which embraces well-nigh half the infinitives in the language, though it contains some obvious truth, is both carelessly stated, and badly resolved.  The single particle to is quite sufficient, both to govern the infinitive, and to connect it to any antecedent term which can make sense with such an adjunct.  But, in fact, the reverend author must have meant to use the “little word” but once; and also to deny that it is a preposition; for he elsewhere says expressly, though, beyond question, erroneously, “A preposition should never be used before the infinitive.”—­Ib., p. 92.  And he also says, “The Infinitive mood expresses a thing in a general manner, without distinction of number, person, or time, and commonly has TO before it.”—­Ib., Second Edition, p. 35.  Now if TO is “before” the mood, it is certainly not a part of it.  And again, if this mood had no distinction of “time,” our author’s two tenses of it, and his own two special rules for their application, would be as absurd as is his notion of its government.  See his Obs. 6 and 7, ib., p. 124.

OBS. 13.—­Richard Hiley, too, a grammarian of perhaps more merit, is equally faulty in his explanation of the infinitive mood.  In the first place, he absurdly says, “TO before the infinitive mood, is considered as forming part of the verb; but in every other situation it is a preposition.”—­Hiley’s Gram., Third Edition, p. 28.  To teach that a “part of the verb” stands “before the mood,” is an absurdity manifestly greater, than the very opposite notion of Dr. Ash, that what is not a part of the verb, may yet be included in the mood.  There is no need of either of these false suppositions; or of the suggestion, doubly false, that to “in every other situation, is a preposition.”  What does preposition mean?  Is to a preposition when it is placed after a verb, and not a preposition when it is placed before it?  For example:  “I rise to shut to the door.”—­See Luke, xiii, 25.

OBS. 14.—­In his syntax, this author further says, “When two verbs come together, the latter must be in the infinitive mood, when it denotes the object of the former; as, ‘Study to improve.’” This is his Rule.  Now look at his Notes. “1.  When the latter verb does not express the object, but the end, or something remote, the word for, or the words in order to, are understood; as, ‘I read to learn;’ that is, ’I read for to learn,’ or, ‘in order [TO] to learn.’  The word for, however, is never, in such instances, expressed in good language. 2.  The infinitive