OBS. 13.—­In some languages, the more negatives one crowds into a sentence, the stronger is the negation; and this appears to have been formerly the case in English, or in what was anciently the language of Britain:  as, “He never yet no vilanie ne sayde in alle his lif unto no manere wight.”—­Chaucer. “Ne I ne wol non reherce, yef that I may.”—­Id. “Give not me counsel; nor let no comforter delight mine ear.”—­Shakspeare.  “She cannot love, nor take no shape nor project of affection.”—­Id. Among people of education, this manner of expression has now become wholly obsolete; though it still prevails, to some extent, in the conversation of the vulgar.  It is to be observed, however, that the repetition of an independent negative word or clause yet strengthens the negation; as, “No, no, no.”—­“No, never.”—­“No, not for an hour.”—­Gal., ii, 5.  “There is none righteous, no, not one.”—­Rom., iii, 10.  But two negatives in the same clause, if they have any bearing on each other, destroy the negation, and render the meaning weakly affirmative; as, “Nor did they not perceive their evil plight.”—­Milton.  That is, they did perceive it. “’His language, though inelegant, is not ungrammatical;’ that is, it is grammatical.”—­ Murray’s Gram., p. 198.  The term not only, or not merely, being a correspondent to but or but also, may be followed by an other negative without this effect, because the two negative words have no immediate bearing on each other; as, “Your brother is not only not present, and not assisting in prosecuting your injuries, but is now actually with Verres.”—­Duncan’s Cicero, p, 19.  “In the latter we have not merely nothing, to denote what the point should be; but no indication, that any point at all is wanting.”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 373.  So the word nothing, when taken positively for nonentity, or that which does not exist, may be followed by an other negative; as,

   “First, seat him somewhere, and derive his race,
    Or else conclude that nothing has no place.”—­Dryden, p. 95.

OBS. 14.—­The common rule of our grammars, “Two negatives, in English, destroy each other, or are equivalent to an affirmative,” is far from being true of all possible examples.  A sort of informal exception to it, (which is mostly confined to conversation,) is made by a familiar transfer of the word neither from the beginning of the clause to the end of it; as, “But here is no notice taken of that neither”—­Johnson’s Gram.  Com., p. 336.  That is, “But neither is any notice here taken of that.”  Indeed a negation may be repeated, by the same word or others, as often as we please, if no two of the