How does the word chaunsemlees come to mean shoes?
An expression very strange to English verse occurs in the line,
"Hir cher was ay semand sori."
I can think of nothing to throw light upon this intensive adverb, except the Danish saamænd, which is generally used in that language (or rather was used, i.e. when Holberg wrote his comedies) as an affirmatory oath. Native authorities explain it to mean "so it is, by the holy men," or in other terms, "by the saints I swear."
I have no doubt that the same kindness which led your correspondent to communicate those delightful extracts, will also make him willing to assist the understanding of them.
J. E.
Oxford.
78. Did Bishop Gibson write a Life of Cromwell?
—Mr. Carlyle, in treating on the biographies of Oliver Cromwell, says that the Short Critical Review of the Life of Oliver Cromwell, by a gentleman of the Middle Temple, was written by a certain "Mr. Banks, a kind of a lawyer and playwright," and that the anonymous Life of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, impartially collected, &c., London, 1724, which Noble ascribes to Bishop Gibson, was by "one Kember, a dissenting minister of London."
On the other hand, Mr. Russell, in his Life of Oliver Cromwell, 2 vols. 12mo. 1829, says: