[Footnote 85: Prof. Brewer says that Erasmus, rejecting the Mediæval Latin and adopting the Classical, no doubt used _salsamenta_ in its classical sense of salt-meat, and referred to the great quantity of it used in England during the winter, when no fresh meat was eaten, but only that which had been killed at the annual autumn slaughtering, and then salted down. Stall-fattening not being practised, the autumn was the time for fat cattle. _Salsamentum_, however, is translated in White and Riddle’s Dictionary, “A. Fish-pickle, brine; B. Salted or pickled fish (so usually in plural).”] [Footnote 86: If any member or reader can refer me to any other verse or prose pieces of like kind, unprinted, or that deserve reprinting, I shall be much obliged to him, and will try to put them in type.] Errata (noted by transcriber): _Capiendo pro_[26]...’” [_missing ’_] the case is too too evident [_duplication in original_] sums it up.[59] [_footnote marker missing in text_] a passage in Edward the Fourth’s _Liber Niger_ [passaeg] ab. 1460 ... Marmaduke Constable [460] In the section “Post-Reformation Cathedral Schools” the attribution of quotes is sometimes obscure. The text layout has been kept as close as possible to the original. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * PREFACE TO RUSSELL. Though this _Boke of Nurture_ by John Russell is the most complete and elaborate of its kind, I have never seen it mentioned by name in any of the many books and essays on early manners and customs, food and dress, that have issued from the press. My own introduction to it was due to a chance turning over, for another purpose, of the leaves of the MS. containing it. Mr Wheatley then told me of Ritson’s reference to it in his _Bibliographica Poetica_, p. 96; and when the text was all printed, a reference in _The Glossary of Domestic Architecture_ (v. III. Pt. I. p. 76, note, col. 2) sent me to MS. Sloane 1315[1]--in the Glossary stated to have been written in 1452--which proved to be a different and unnamed version of Russell. Then the Sloane Catalogue disclosed a third MS., No. 2027[2], and the earliest of the three, differing rather less than No. 1315 from Russell’s text, but still anonymous. I have therefore to thank for knowledge of the MSS. that special Providence which watches over editors as well as children and drunkards, and have not on this occasion to express gratitude to Ritson and Warton, to whom every lover of Early English Manuscripts is under such deep obligations, and whose guiding hands (however faltering) in Poetry have made us long so often for the like in Prose. Would that one of our many Historians of English Literature had but conceived the idea of cataloguing the materials for his History before sitting down to write it! Would that a wise