All is hazard that we have,

Here is nothing bideing;

Dayes of pleasure are like streams

Through faire Medows gliding.

Ballad Society, vol. i. p. 350.

establish the I know of no

580 b. The analysis of a sentence is, however, a subjective act, as we have already observed; and if any insist on mentally supplying the formula requisite to participial character of every verb in -ing, argument potent enough to restrain them. But there is a large number of instances in which I think that whether the case be historically or grammatically tested, it must be pronounced an infinitive. As this is a point of some importance, I have collected rather a copious list of examples of the infinitive in -ing.

Historically there is no case clearer than that in which it follows verbs of coming or going; as

ffor yonder I see her come rydinge.

Percy Ballads, ed. Furnivall, vol. i. p. 160.

This Lady when shee came thus ryding.-Id. p. 161.

Came tow'ring, arm'd in Adamant and Gold.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 110.

This is now commonly parsed as a Participle, through classical grammar, which has now grown among us into a tradition; but if we refer back to Saxon poetry, we find that verbs of coming and going constantly take infinitives after them precisely in the position now held by these seeming participles.

This grammatical character is sometimes illustrated by the help of the French à before these infinitives :

Oh how shall the dumb go a courting?-Bloomfield.

580 c. Perhaps the plainest instances (to the modern.

grammatical sense) are those in which the word has a verbal government, and yet cannot be accounted a participle, as—

dropping, drawing.

Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil

Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

And growing old in drawing nothing up.

finding.

William Cowper, The Garden.

And I can see that Mrs. Grant is anxious for her not finding Mansfield dull as winter comes on.- —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, vol. ii. ch. 3.

giving, acquiring.

I am convinced a man might sit down as systematically and as successfully to the study of wit, as he might to the study of the mathematics; and I would answer for it, that, by giving up only six hours a day to being witty, he should come on prodigiously before midsummer, so that his friends should hardly know him again. For what is there to hinder the mind from gradually acquiring a habit of attending to the lighter relations of ideas in which wit consists? Punning grows upon everybody, and punning is the wit of words. Sydney Smith, Wit and Humour.

simplifying.

I feel it a surprise, every time I see Parry: there seems to be a power of simplifying whatever comes near him, an atmosphere in which trifles die a natural death.-Memoirs of Sir W. E. Parry.

organizing, gathering, obtaining, distributing, detecting.

Organizing charitable relief over areas conterminous with those of the Poor Law, and gathering together all the representative forces we can for common action, seems to us the best method of obtaining the two important aims of distributing judicious charity and detecting imposition.—Alsager Hay Hill, Times, October 22, 1869.

predicting, conspiring.

Some people will never distinguish between predicting an eclipse and conspiring to bring it about.

leaving.

Cæsar spent his winters at Lucca without leaving his province.-E. A. Freeman, Essays, vii. p. 166.

580 d. A very good illustration of our point is furnished by sentences of the varying type in which the infinitiveregnant with to confronts the flexional infinitive :

It is quite possible for you to carry your point, without gaining your end. But talking is not always to converse.

W. Cowper, Conversation, 7.

Where the case is so plain, it is not for the dignity of this house to inquire instead of acting.--February 11, 1870.

To select a First Lord of the Admiralty is something like appointing the Captain of a ship.-March 14, 1876.

When there are a great many infinitives to be expressed, it is here as elsewhere the delight of our language to have the means of avoiding monotony by variation; as—

But it is clear that, as society goes on accumulating powers and gifts, the one hope of society is in men's modest and unselfish use of them; in simplicity and nobleness of spirit increasing, as things impossible to our fathers become easy and familiar to us; in men caring for better things than money and ease and honour; in being able to see the riches of the world increase and not set our hearts upon them; in being able to admire and forego.-R. W. Church, Sermons, ii. (1868).

580 e. A case that deserves a place apart is that of being and having when they enter into composite infinitives, active or passive :

The present apparent hopelessness of a really Ecumenical Council being assembled.-John Keble, Life, p. 425.

In the next piece it would be allowable to substitute to have heard for having heard:

I recollect having heard the noble lord the member for Tiverton deliver in this House one of the best speeches I ever listened to. On that occasion the noble lord gloried in the proud name of England, and, pointing to the security with which an Englishman might travel abroad, he triumphed in

the idea that his countrymen might exclaim, in the spirit of the ancient Roman, Civis Romanus sum..--John Bright, Speeches, 1853.

At the close of the following quotation it would mean the same, and be equally correct, if 'being' were put in the place of to be:

I did not show all my dissatisfaction, however, for that would only have estranged us; and it is not required, nay, it may be wrong, to show all you feel or think: what is required of us is, not to show what we do not feel or think; for that is to be false.-George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, ch. xii.

In the early days of the infinitive with to it was sometimes pushed (like a new toy) beyond the sphere since allotted to it, and we find it in places where the present language would render it by the infinitive in -ing. Spenser has

For not to have been dipt in Lethe lake

Could save the son of Thetis from to die;

which in plain English would run somewhat thus :- -'His having-been-dipped in Lethe could not save Achilles from

dying.'

580 f. The expression in the following line is certainly condensed, and the grammar by no means explicit, but I should be curious to know by what process of thought the word writing could be accepted in any other character than that of an infinitive :

Nature's chief master-piece is writing well.

Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, 725.

The expression about doing anything' is not generally approved by grammarians, yet it is met with in authors of repute :

Mrs. Wilson smiled, and, addressing herself to Mrs. Benson, said, Now, madam, we will, if you please, return to the house; for I fancy by this time dinner is nearly ready, and my husband and sons are about coming home.Mrs. Trimmer, Fabulous Histories, ch. xx.

He was about retracing his steps, when he was suddenly transfixed to the spot by a sudden appearance.-Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, ch. xxiii.

The aversion which there is to this particular expression might perhaps be modified if the verb in -ing were acknowledged to be an infinitive. I apprehend that the ground of the objection to all such terms of expression as 'before coming,' 'since leaving,' is that under the participial hypothesis the logical sentiment is dissatisfied.

580 g. The German scholar will hardly require to have the reality of this old infinitive urged upon him, if he marks how often the German infinitive can only be rendered by the English verb in -ing.

Luther.

Auch haben sie mich nicht gesunden im Tempel mit jemand reden, oder einen Aufruhr machen im Volk,

1611.

And they neither found me in the Temple disputing with any man, neither raising vp the people,

Acts xxiv. 12.

There are some English constructions in which this infinitive stands out in as unequivocal a character as a German or a Latin infinitive could do. Such is the case with attempting in the following extract:—

I am not sure that it is of very much use attempting to define exactly what is meant by Honouring parents.—R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments, p. 125.

The really dubious cases are those which arise from the natural contiguity of the infinitive to the noun-substantive. In fact these two may blend so closely as to defy all attempts at a line of demarcation. I will therefore only say, that in such instances as the following I think the meaning is better apprehended by regarding them as verb-substantives, that is to say, infinitives.