By the time of Shakespeare this license was already much restricted, but a good many double negatives are nevertheless to be found in his plays, and he was particularly shaky in the use of /nor/. In "Richard III" one finds "I never was /nor never/ will be"; in "Measure for Measure," "harp not on that /nor/ do /not/ banish treason," and in "Romeo and Juliet," "thou expectedst not, /nor/ I looked not for." This misuse of /nor/ is still very frequent. In other directions, too, the older forms show a tendency to survive all the assaults of grammarians. "/No/ it /doesn't/," heard every day and by no means from the ignorant only, is a sort of double negative. The insertion of /but/ before that, as in "I doubt /but/ that" and "there is no question /but/ that," makes a double negative that is probably full-blown. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is heard on the floor of Congress every day, and the Fowlers show that it is also common in England.[74] Even worse forms get into the /Congressional Record/. Not long ago, for example, I encountered "without /hardly/ an exception" in a public paper of the utmost importance.[75] There are, indeed, situations in which the double negative leaps to the lips or from the pen almost irresistibly; even such careful writers as Huxley, Robert Louis Stevenson and Leslie Stephen have [Pg234] occasionally dallied with it.[76] It is perfectly allowable in the Romance languages, and, as we have seen, is almost the rule in the American vulgate. Now and then some anarchistic student of the language boldly defends and even advocates it. "The double negative," said a writer in the /London Review/ a long time ago,[77] "has been abandoned to the great injury of strength of expression." Surely "I won't take nothing" is stronger than either "I will take nothing" or "I won't take anything." "Language begins," says Sayce, "with sentences, not with single words." In a speech in process of rapid development, unrestrained by critical analysis, the tendency to sacrifice the integrity of words to the needs of the complete sentence is especially marked. One finds it clearly in American. Already we have examined various assimilation and composition forms: /that'n/, /use' to/, /would'a/, /them 'ere/ and so on. Many others are observable. /Off'n/ is a good example; it comes from /off of/ and shows a preposition decaying to the form of a mere inflectional particle. One constantly hears "I bought it /off'n/ John." /Sort'a/, /kind'a/ and their like follow in the footsteps of /would'a/. /Usen't/ follows the analogy of /don't/ and /wouldn't/. /Would 've/ and /should 've/ are widely used; Lardner commonly hears them as /would of/ and /should of/. The neutral /a/-particle also appears in other situations, especially before /way/, as in /that'a way/ and /this'a way/. It is found again in /a tall/, a liaison form of /at all/.[78] § 8