e _needs_ not _proceed_."--_Murray's Key_, 8vo, p. 180.

OBS. 14.--On questions of grammar, the _practice of authors_ ought to be of
more weight, than the _dogmatism of grammarians_; but it is often difficult
to decide well by either; because errors and contradictions abound in both.
For example: Dr. Blair says, (in speaking of the persons represented by _I_
and _thou_,) "Their sex _needs_ not _be_ marked."--_Rhet._, p. 79. Jamieson
abridges the work, and says, "_needs_ not _to_ be marked."--_Gram. of
Rhet._, p. 28. Dr. Lowth also says, "_needs_ not _be_ marked."--_Gram._, p.
21. Churchill enlarges the work, and says, "_needs_ not _to_ be
marked."--_New Gram._, p. 72. Lindley Murray copies Lowth, and says,
"_needs_ not _be_ marked."--_Gram._, 12mo, 2d Ed., p. 39; 23d Ed., p. 51;
and perhaps all other editions. He afterwards enlarges his own work, and
says, "_needs_ not _to_ be marked."--_Octavo Gram._, p. 51. But, according
to Greenleaf they all express the idea ungrammatically; the only true form
being, "Their sex _need_ not _be marked_." See _Gram. Simplified_, p. 48.
In the two places in which the etymology and the syntax of this verb are
examined, I have cited from proper sources more than twenty examples in
which _to_ is used after it, and more than twenty others in which the verb
is not inflected in the third person singular. In the latter, _need_ is
treated as an auxiliary; in the former, it is a principal verb, of the
regular construction. If the principal verb _need_ can also govern the
infinitive without _to_, as all our grammarians have supposed, then there
is a third form which is unobjectionable, and my pupils may take their
choice of the three. But still there is a fourth form which nobody
approves, though the hands of some great men have furnished us with
examples of it: as, "A figure of thought _need_ not _to_ detort the words
from their literal sense."--_J. Q. Adams's Lectures_, Vol. ii, p. 254.
"Which a man _need_ only _to_ appeal to his own feelings immediately to
evince."--_Clarkson's Prize-Essay on Slavery_, p. 106.

OBS. 15.--Webster and Greenleaf seem inclined to justify the use of _dare_,
as well as of _need_, for the third person singular. Their doctrine is
this: "In _popular practice_ it is used in the third person, without the
personal termination. Thus, instead of saying, 'He _dares_ not do it;' WE
_generally_ say, 'He _dare_ not do it.' In like manner, _need_, when an
active verb, is regular