OBS. 8.—­The infinitive mood, a phrase, or a sentence, (and, according to some authors, the participle in ing, or a phrase beginning with this participle,) is sometimes the proper subject of a verb, being equivalent to a nominative of the third person singular; as, “To play is pleasant.”—­Lowth’s Gram., p. 80.  “To write well, is difficult; to speak eloquently, is still more difficult.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 81.  “To take men off from prayer, tends to irreligiousness, is granted.”—­Barclay’s Works, i, 214.  “To educate a child perfectly, requires profounder thought, greater wisdom, than to govern a state.”—­Channing’s Self-Culture, p. 30.  “To determine these points, belongs to good sense.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 321.  “How far the change would contribute to his welfare, comes to be considered.”—­Id., Sermons.  “That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, is a doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with extreme caution.”—­Life of Schiller, p. 148.  “That there is no disputing about taste, is a saying so generally received as to have become a proverb.”—­Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 360.  “For what purpose they embarked, is not yet known.”—­“To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of sin, is utterly impossible.”—­Dr. J. Owen.

   “There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
    But drinking largely sobers us again.”—­Pope.

OBS. 9.—­The same meaning will be expressed, if the pronoun it be placed before the verb, and the infinitive, phrase, or santance, after it; as, “It is pleasant to play,”—­“It is difficult to write well;” &c.  The construction of the following sentences is rendered defective by the omission of this pronoun:  “Why do ye that which [it] is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?”—­Luke, vi, 2.  “The show-bread, which [it] is not lawful to eat, but for the priests only.”—­Ib., vi, 4.  “We have done that which [it] was our duty to do.”—­Ib., xvii, 10.  Here the relative which ought to be in the objective case, governed by the infinitives; but the omission of the word it makes this relative the nominative to is or was, and leaves to do and to eat without any regimen.  This is not ellipsis, but error.  It is an accidental gap into which a side piece falls, and leaves a breach elsewhere.  The following is somewhat like it, though what falls in, appears to leave no chasm:  “From this deduction, [it] may be easily seen how it comes to pass, that personification makes so great a figure.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 155.  “Whether the author had any meaning in this expression, or what it was, [it] is not easy to determine.”—­Murray’s Gram., Vol. i, p. 298.  “That warm climates should accelerate the growth of the human body, and shorten its duration, [it] is very reasonable to believe.”—­Ib., p. 144.  These also need the pronoun, though Murray thought them complete without it.