(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; [as,] ’Our IDEAS of eternity CAN BE nothing but an infinite succession of moments of duration.’—­LOCKE.  ’A wise SON MAKETH a glad father; but a foolish SON IS the heaviness of his mother.’  Abstract the name from its attribute, and the proposition cannot always be true.  ’HE that gathereth in summer is a wise son.’  Take away the description, ‘that gathereth in summer,’ and the affirmation ceases to be true, or becomes inapplicable.  These sentences or clauses thus constituting the subject of an affirmation, may be termed nominative sentences.”—­Improved Gram., p. 95.  This teaching reminds me of the Doctor’s own exclamation:  “What strange work has been made with Grammar!”—­Ib., p. 94; Philos.  Gram., 138.  In Nesbit’s English Parsing, a book designed mainly for “a