Hey I understand your idea!
I wanted the same, but if you limit an infinite scroll it ain’t infinite no more… So how to get around and still get the effect you want (my wp site is still very young and easy to apply this method)
So what I did was after my 10 most recent posts I edited the rest:
edit post – edit visibility – hide on the front page (check)!
So I now have the infinite scroll effect but after 10 posts it ends 😉
From now on all i have to do is go to some older posts and check that box to keep my homepage short and sweet 😉
Hope I helped!