p. 10.  In punctuation, it is a very chaos, as one might guess from the following Rule:  “A word of the second person, and in the subjective case, must have a semicolon after it; as, John; hear me.”—­Id., p. 282.  Behold his practice!  “John, beware.”—­P. 84.  “Children, study.”—­P. 80.  “Henry; study.”—­P. 249.  “Pupil:  parse.”—­P. 211; and many other places.  “Be thou, or do thou be writing?  Be ye or you, or do ye or you be writing?”—­P. 110.  According to his Rule, this tense requires six semicolons; but the author points it with two commas and two notes of interrogation!

[340] In Butler’s Practical Grammar, first published in 1845, this doctrine is taught as a novelty.  His publishers, in their circular letter, speak of it as one of “the peculiar advantages of this grammar over preceding works,” and as an important matter, “heretofore altogether omitted by grammarians!” Wells cites Butler in support of his false principle:  “A verb in the infinitive is often preceded by a noun or pronoun in the objective, which has no direct dependence on any other word.  Examples:—­’Columbus ordered a strong fortress of wood and plaster to be erected.’—­Irving.  ’Its favors here should make us tremble.’—­ Young.”  See Wells’s School Gram., p. 147.

[341] “Sometimes indeed the verb hath two regimens, and then the preposition is necessary to one of them; as, ’I address myself to my judges.’”—­Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 178.  Here the verb address governs the pronoun myself, and is also the antecedent to the preposition to; and the construction would be similar, if the preposition governed the infinitive or a participle:  as, “I prepared myself to swim;” or, “I prepared myself for swimming.”  But, in any of these cases, it is not very accurate to say, “the verb has two regimens;” for the latter term is properly the regimen of the preposition.  Cardell, by robbing the prepositions, and supposing ellipses, found two regimens for every verb.  W. Allen, on the contrary, (from whom Nixon gathered his doctrine above,) by giving the “accusative” to the infinitive, makes a multitude of our active-transitive verbs “neuter.”  See Allen’s Gram., p. 166.  But Nixon absurdly calls the verb “active-transitive,” because it governs the infinitive; i. e. as he supposes—­and, except when to is not used, erroneously supposes.

[342] A certain new theorist, who very innocently fogs himself and his credulous readers with a deal of impertinent pedantry, after denouncing my doctrine that to before the infinitive is a preposition, appeals to me thus:  “Let me ask you, G. B.—­is not the infinitive in Latin the same as in the English? Thus, I desire to teach Latin—­Ego Cupio docere.