OBS. 31.—­After the verb make, some writers insert the verb be, and suppress the preposition to; as, “He must make every syllable, and even every letter, in the word which he pronounces, be heard distinctly.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 329; Murray’s E. Reader, p. 9.  “You must make yourself be heard with pleasure and attention.”—­Duncan’s Cicero, p. 84.  “To make himself be heard by all.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 328.  “To make ourselves be heard by one.”—­Ibid. “Clear enough to make me be understood.”—­Locke, on Ed., p. 198.  In my opinion, it would be better, either to insert the to, or to use the participle only; as, “The information which he possessed, made his company to be courted.”—­Dr. M’Rie.  “Which will both show the importance of this rule, and make the application of it to be understood.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 103.  Or, as in these brief forms:  “To make himself heard by all.”—­“Clear enough to make me understood.”

OBS. 32.—­In those languages in which the infinitive is distinguished as such by its termination, this part of the verb may be used alone as the subject of a finite verb; but in English it is always necessary to retain the sign to before an abstract infinitive, because there is nothing else to distinguish the verb from a noun.  Here we may see a difference between our language and the French, although it has been shown, that in their government of the infinitive they are in some degree analogous:—­“HAIR est un tourment; AIMER est un besoin de l’ame.”—­M. de Segur.  “To hate is a torment; to love is a requisite of the soul.”  If from this any will argue that to is not here a preposition, the same argument will be as good, to prove that for is not a preposition when it governs the objective case; because that also may be used without any antecedent term of relation:  as, “They are by no means points of equal importance, for me to be deprived of your affections, and for him to be defeated in his prosecution.”—­Anon., in W. Allen’s Gram., p. 166.  I said, the sign to must always be put before an abstract infinitive:  but possibly a repetition of this sign may not always be necessary, when several such infinitives occur in the same construction:  as, “But, to fill a heart with joy, restore content to the afflicted, or relieve the necessitous, these fall not within the reach of their five senses.”—­Art of Thinking, p. 66.  It may be too much to affirm, that this is positively ungrammatical; yet it would be as well or better, to express it thus:  “But to relieve the necessitous, to restore content to the afflicted, and to fill a heart with joy, these full not within the reach of their five senses.”