loyed without a nominative, either expressed or implied,"
are again carefully reiterated by the learned Professor Fowler, in his
great text-book of philology "in its Elements and Forms,"--called, rather
extravagantly, an "English Grammar." See, in his edition of 1850, Sec.597,
Note 3 and Note 7; also Sec.520, Note 2. Wells's authorities for "Imperatives
Absolute," are, "Frazee, Allen and Cornwell, Nutting, Lynde, and Chapin;"
and, with reference to "NEED and WANT," he says, "See Webster, Perley, and
Ingersoll."--_School Gram._, 1850, Sec.209.

(5.) But, in obvious absurdity most strangely overlooked by the writer, all
these blunderers are outdone by a later one, who says: "_Need_ and _dare_
are sometimes used in _a general sense without a nominative_: as, 'There
_needed_ no prophet to tell us that;' 'There _wanted_ no advocates to
secure the voice of the people.' It is better, however, to supply _it_, as
a nominative, than admit an _anomala_. Sometimes, when intransitive, they
have the _plural form_ with a singular _noun_: as, 'He need not fear;' 'He
dare not hurt you.'"--_Rev. H. W. Bailey's E. Gram._, 1854, p. 128. The
last example--"_He dare_"--is bad English: _dare_ should be _dares_. "He
_need_ not _fear_," if admitted to be right, is of the potential mood; in
which no verb is inflected in the third person. "_He_," too, is not a
"_noun_;" nor can it ever rightly have a "_plural_" verb. "To supply _it_,
as a nominative," where the verb is declared to be "_without a
nominative_," and to make "_wanted_" an example of "_dare_" are blunders
precisely worthy of an author who knows not how to spell _anomaly!_

[387] This interpretation, and others like it, are given not only by
_Murray_, but by many other grammarians, one of whom at least was earlier
than he. See _Bicknell's Gram._, Part i, p. 123; _Ingersoll's_, 153;
_Guy's_, 91; _Alger's_, 73; _Merchant's_, 100; _Picket's_, 211; _Fisk's_,
146; _D. Adams's_, 81; _R. C. Smith's_, 182.

[388] The same may be said of Dr. Webster's "_nominative sentences_;" three
fourths of which are nothing but _phrases_ that include a nominative with
which the following verb agrees. And who does not know, that to call the
adjuncts of any thing "an _essential part_ of it," is a flat absurdity? An
_adjunct_ is "something added to another, but _not essentially a part_ of
it."--_Webster's Dict._ But, says the Doctor, "Attributes and other words
often make an _essential part_ of the nominative;