SPLIT INFINITIVES
SIR-
Your right to hold, and to express, your views I would, with Voltaire, to the death defend; To criticise (aright, awrong) the news Is a review's correct and proper end. And yet I wonder that you do not use A tithe of the attention you expend On public questions, on the P's and Q's Of your own trade of letters. Now perpend: How far your little Taper sheds his rays! How strict is Strix! And Pharos has his wit!
You deem, I feel, the curse of modern days Is nuclear fission (misapplied). But it Welcome would be if you would heed the phrase: Infinitives, like atoms, mayn't be split. Issue of July 24: P. 90, Col. 3, antepenultimate line: To openly avow
P. 101, Col. 1, line 62:
To painstakingly fake P. 106, Col. 3, Line 10: To actually fry —Grammatically yours GUY RAMSEY
35 Downside Crescent, N.W.3
[Hard lines—but almost every one a howler;
The split infinitive's no sin (see Fowler), The atom, to our peril, can be split, And Voltaire never said a word of it. Wrong, Sir, on science, syntax and Vol-
taire
You'd be on safer ground in splitting hair.—Editor, Spectator.]
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