which is perhaps a little better:  “The person ‘I’ is spoken of as acted upon.”—­Bullions, Prin. of E. Gram., 2d Edition, p. 29.  But there is a manifest absurdity in saying, with this learned “Professor of Languages,” that the pronouns of the different persons are those persons:  as, “I is the first person, and denotes the speaker. Thou is the second, and denotes the person spoken to.”—­Ib., p. 22.

[386] (1.) Concerning the verb need, Dr. Webster has the following note:  “In the use of this verb there is another irregularity, which is peculiar, the verb being without a nominative, expressed or implied.  ’Whereof here needs no account.’—­Milt., P. L., 4. 235.  There is no evidence of the fact, and there needs none.  This is an established use of need.”—­Philos.  Gram., p. 178; Improved Gram., 127; Greenleaf’s Gram.  Simp., p. 38; Fowler’s E. Gram., p. 537.  “Established use?” To be sure, it is “an established use;” but the learned Doctor’s comment is a most unconscionable blunder,—­a pedantic violation of a sure principle of Universal Grammar,—­a perversion worthy only of the veriest ignoramus.  Yet Greenleaf profitably publishes it, with other plagiarisms, for “Grammar Simplified!” Now the verb “needs,” like the Latin eget, signifying is necessary, is here not active, but neuter; and has the nominative set after it, as any verb must, when the adverb there or here is before it.  The verbs lack and want may have the same construction, and can have no other, when the word there, and not a nominative, precedes them; as, “Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous.”—­Gen., xviii, 28.  There is therefore neither “irregularity,” nor any thing “peculiar,” in thus placing the verb and its nominative.

(2.) Yet have we other grammarians, who, with astonishing facility, have allowed themselves to be misled, and whose books are now misleading the schools, in regard to this very simple matter.  Thus Wells:  “The transitive verbs need and want, are sometimes employed in a general sense, without a nominative, expressed or implied.  Examples:—­’There needed a new dispensation.’—­Caleb Cushing.  ’There needs no better picture.’—­Irving.  ’There wanted not patrons to stand up.’—­Sparks.  ’Nor did there want Cornice, or frieze.’—­Milton.”—­Wells’s School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 141:  113th Ed., p. 154.  In my edition of Milton, the text is, “Nor did they want Cornice or frieze.”—­P.  L., B. i, l. 715, 716.  This reading makes want a “transitive” verb, but the other makes it neuter, with the nominative following it.  Again, thus Weld:  “A verb in the imperative mode, and the transitive verbs need, want, and require, sometimes