So also the passive infinitive, or a perfect participle taken in a passive sense; as, "To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom.

Let, when used intransitively, required the preposition to before the following infinitive; as, "He would not let [i. e. forbear] to counsel the king.

a noun is put after an abstract infinitive that is not transitive, it appears necessarily to be in the objective case,[360] though not governed by the verb; for if we supply any noun to which such infinitive may be supposed to refer, it must be introduced before the verb by the preposition for: as, "To be an Englishman in London, a Frenchman in Paris, a Spaniard in Madrid, is no easy matter; and yet it is necessary.

" EXCEPTION.Ought, must, need, and should (in the sense of "ought") have no distinctive form to denote past time; with these verbs present time is denoted by putting the complementary infinitive in the present tense, past time is denoted by putting the complementary infinitive in the perfect tense: as, "You ought to go," "You ought to have gone;" "He should be careful," "He should have been careful."

If need is sometimes used without inflection, this peculiarity, or the disuse of to before the subsequent infinitive, is not a necessary result of its "intransitive" character.

13.Where precision is necessary, loose or abstract infinitives are improper; as, "But to be precise, signifies, that they express that idea, and no more.

But at the sound of certain words, like Right, Freedom, the Good, Beingthis nugatory infinitive of the cupolaand many others of the same sort, the German's head begins to swim, and falling straightway into a kind of delirium he launches forth into high-flown phrases which have no meaning whatever.

You will note duplication of words, split infinitives, mixed tenses, poorly balanced sentences.