[413] After the word “fare,” Murray put a semicolon, which shows that he misunderstood the mood of the verb “hear.”  It is not always necessary to repeat the particle to, when two or more infinitives are connected; and this fact is an other good argument against calling the preposition to “a part of the verb.”  But in this example, and some others here exhibited, the repetition is requisite.—­G.  B.

[414] “The Infinitive Mood is not confined to a trunk or nominative, and is always preceded by to, expressed or implied.”—­S.  Barrett’s Gram., 1854, p. 43.

[415] Lindley Murray, and several of his pretended improvers, say, “The infinitive sometimes follows the word AS:  thus, ’An object so high as to be invisible.’  The infinitive occasionally follows THAN after a comparison; as, ’He desired nothing more than to know his own imperfections.’”—­Murray’s Gram., 8vo, p. 184; Fisk’s, 125; Alger’s, 63; Merchant’s, 92.  See this second example in Weld’s Gram., p. 167; Abridg., 124.  Merchant, not relishing the latter example, changes it thus:  “I wish nothing more, than to know his fate.”  He puts a comma after more, and probably means, “I wish nothing else than to know his fate.”  So does Fisk, in the other version:  and probably means, “He desired nothing else than to know his own imperfections.”  But Murray, Alger, and Weld, accord in punctuation, and their meaning seems rather to be, “He desired nothing more heartily than [he desired] to know his own imperfections.”  And so is this or a similar text interpreted by both Ingersoll and Weld, who suppose this infinitive to be “governed by another verb, understood:  as, ‘He desired nothing more than to see his friends;’ that is, ’than he desired to see,’ &c.”—­Ingersoll’s Gram., p. 244; Weld’s Abridged, 124.  But obvious as is the ambiguity of this fictitious example, in all its forms, not one of these five critics perceived the fault at all.  Again, in their remark above cited, Ingersoll, Fisk, and Merchant, put a comma before the preposition “after,” and thus make the phrase, “after a comparison,” describe the place of the infinitive.  But Murray and Alger probably meant that this phrase should denote the place of the conjunction “than.”  The great “Compiler” seems to me to have misused the phrase “a comparison,” for, “an adjective or adverb of the comparative degree;” and the rest, I suppose, have blindly copied him, without thinking or knowing what he ought to have said, or meant to say.  Either this, or a worse error, is here apparent.  Five learned grammarians severally represent either “than” or “the infinitive,” as being AFTER “a comparison;” of which one is the copula, and the other but the beginning of the latter term!  Palpable as is the absurdity,