Split Infinitives 03 George Bernard Shaw's opinion

Our formidable George Bernard Shaw, the writer who admired and respected Henry Sweet, showed a great disdain in the ungrammatical usage of the language. Here is a letter from Shaw to the Chronicle sarcastically, with contempt and hatred, claiming to replace the columnist of the paper. The main reason, because he uses split infinitive.

If you do not immediately suppress the person who takes it upon himself to lay down the law almost every day in your columns on the subject of literary composition, I will give up the Chronicle. The man is a pedant, an ignoramus, an idiot and a self-advertising duffer... Your fatuous specialist... is now beginning to rebuke 'second-rate' newspapers for using such phrases as 'to suddenly go' and 'to boldly go'. I ask you, Sir, to put this man out... without interfering with his perfect freedom of choice between 'to suddenly go', 'to go suddenly' and 'suddenly to go'... Set him adrift and try an intelligent Newfoundland dog in his place. (Letter to the Chronicle, 1892)

Split infinitive is solecism enough to utterly infuriate a writer and to bitterly destroy a man's career.