play _is_
pleasant."--_Lowth's Gram._, p. 80. "To write well, _is_ difficult; to
speak eloquently, _is_ still more difficult."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 81. "To
take men off from prayer, _tends_ to irreligiousness, _is
granted_."--_Barclay's Works_, i, 214. "To educate a child perfectly,
_requires_ profounder thought, greater wisdom, than to govern a
state."--_Channing's Self-Culture_, p. 30. "To determine these points,
_belongs_ to good sense."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 321. "How far the change
would contribute to his welfare, _comes_ to be considered."--_Id.,
Sermons_. "That too much care does hurt in any of our tasks, _is_ a
doctrine so flattering to indolence, that we ought to receive it with
extreme caution."--_Life of Schiller_, p. 148. "That there is no disputing
about taste, _is_ a saying so generally received as to have become a
proverb."--_Kames, El. of Crit._, ii, 360. "For what purpose they embarked,
_is_ not yet known."--"To live in sin and yet to believe the forgiveness of
sin, _is_ utterly impossible."--_Dr. J. Owen_.

"There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking largely _sobers_ us again."--_Pope_.

OBS. 9.--The same meaning will be expressed, if the pronoun _it_ be placed
before the verb, and the infinitive, phrase, or santance, after it; as,
"_It_ is pleasant _to play_,"--"_It_ is difficult _to write well_;" &c. The
construction of the following sentences is rendered defective by the
omission of this pronoun: "Why do ye that which [_it_] is not lawful to do
on the sabbath days?"--_Luke_, vi, 2. "The show-bread, which [_it_] is not
lawful to eat, but for the priests only."--_Ib._, vi, 4. "We have done that
which [_it_] was our duty to do."--_Ib._, xvii, 10. Here the relative
_which_ ought to be in the objective case, governed by the infinitives; but
the omission of the word _it_ makes this relative the nominative to _is_ or
_was_, and leaves _to do_ and _to eat_ without any regimen. This is not
ellipsis, but error. It is an accidental gap into which a side piece falls,
and leaves a breach elsewhere. The following is somewhat like it, though
what falls in, appears to leave no chasm: "From this deduction, [_it_] _may
be easily seen_ how it comes to pass, that personification makes so great a
figure."--_Blair's Rhet._, p. 155. "Whether the author had any meaning in
this expression, or what it was, [_it_] _is not easy_ to
determine."--_Murray's Gram._, Vol. i, p. 298. "That warm climates should