ain, thus Weld: "_A verb in the
imperative mode_, and the _transitive_ verbs _need, want_, and _require_,
sometimes appear to be used indefinitely, _without a nominative_; as, _let_
there be light; There _required_ haste in the business; There _needs_ no
argument for proving, &c. There _wanted_ not men who would, &c. The last
expressions have an _active form with a passive sense_, and should perhaps
rather be considered _elliptical_ than _wanting a nominative_; as, _haste
is required, no argument is needed_, &c."--_Weld's English Grammar
Illustrated_, p. 143. Is there anywhere, in print, viler pedantry than
this? The only elliptical example, "_Let_ there be light,"--a kind of
sentence from which the nominative is _usually suppressed_,--is here
absurdly represented as being full, yet without a subject for its verb;
while other examples, which are full, and in which the nominative _must
follow_ the verb, because the adverb "_there_" precedes, are first denied
to have nominatives, and then most bunglingly tortured with false ellipses,
to prove that they have them!

(3.) The idea of a command _wherein no person or thing is commanded_, seems
to have originated with Webster, by whom it has been taught, since 1807, as
follows: "In some cases, the imperative verb is used without a definite
nominative."--_Philos. Gram._, p. 141; _Imp. Gram._, 86; _Rudiments_, 69.
See the same words in _Frazee's Gram._, p. 133. Wells has something
similar: "A verb in the imperative is sometimes used _absolutely_, having
no direct reference to any particular subject expressed or implied; as,
'And God said, _Let_ there be light.'"--_School Gram._, p. 141. But, when
this command was uttered to the dark waves of primeval chaos, it must have
meant, "_Do ye let light be there._" What else could it mean? There may
frequently be difficulty in determining what or who is addressed by the
imperative _let_, but there seems to be more in affirming that it has no
subject. Nutting, puzzled with this word, makes the following dubious and
unsatisfactory suggestion: "Perhaps it may be, in many cases, equivalent to
_may_; or it may be termed itself an _imperative mode impersonal_; that is,
containing a command or an entreaty addressed to no particular
person."--_Nutting's Practical Gram._, p. 47.

(4.) These several errors, about the "Imperative used Absolutely," with "no
subject addressed," as in "_Let there be light_," and the Indicative "verbs
NEED and WANT, emp