[407] Here is a literal version, in which two infinitives are governed by the preposition between; and though such a construction is uncommon, I know not why it should be thought less accurate in the one language than in the other.  In some exceptive phrases, also, it seems not improper to put the infinitive after some other preposition than to; as, “What can she do besides sing?”—­“What has she done, except rock herself?” But such expressions, if allowable, are too unfrequent to be noticed in any general Rule of syntax.  In the following example, the word of pretty evidently governs the infinitive:  “Intemperance characterizes our discussions, that is calculated to embitter in stead of conciliate.”—­CINCINNATI HERALD:  Liberator, No. 986.

[408] This doctrine has been lately revived in English by William B. Fowle, who quotes Dr. Rees, Beauzee, Harris, Tracy, and Crombie, as his authorities for it.  He is right in supposing the English infinitive to be generally governed by the preposition to, but wrong in calling it a noun, or “the name of the verb,” except this phrase be used in the sense in which every verb may be the name of itself.  It is an error too, to suppose with Beauzee, “that the infinitive never in any language refers to a subject or nominative;” or, as Harris has it, that infinitives “have no reference at all to persons or substances.”  See Fowle’s True English Gram., Part ii, pp. 74 and 75.  For though the infinitive verb never agrees with a subject or nominative, like a finite verb, it most commonly has a very obvious reference to something which is the subject of the being, action, or passion, which it expresses; and this reference is one of the chief points of difference between the infinitive and a noun.  S. S. Greene, in a recent grammar, absurdly parses infinitives “as nouns,” and by the common rules for nouns, though he begins with calling them verbs.  Thus:  “Our honor is to be maintained.  To be maintained, is a regular passive VERB, infinitive mode, present tense, and is used as a NOUN in the relation of predicate; according to Rule II.  A noun or pronoun used with the copula to form the predicate, must be in the nominative case.”—­Greene’s Gram., 1848. p. 93. (See the Rule, ib. p. 29.) This author admits, “The ‘to’ seems, like the preposition, to perform the office of a connective:”  but then he ingeniously imagines, “The infinitive differs from the preposition and its object, in that the ‘to’ is the only preposition used with the verb.”  And so he concludes, “The two [or more] parts of the infinitive are taken together, and, thus combined, may become a NOUN in any relation.”—­Ib., 1st Edition, p. 87.  S. S. Greene will also have the infinitive to make the verb before it transitive;