as the Hon. Frederick Ponsonby, perhaps the best judge of the game in his day. He was born in 1815, played his first match at Lord's for Harrow against Eton in 1832, founded the I Zingari in 1845, succeeded to the peerage in 1880, and died in 1895. He comes within the scope of this book only by virtue of what he had heard of Lambert and Lord Frederick Beauclerk and his recollections of Old Clarke; and it was to him, it will be noticed, that Old Clarke's letter is dedicated. Ponsonby and his life-long friend Bob Grimston, whose life the late Frederick Gale wrote with such spirit and affection, were the patron saints of Harrow cricket. Lord Charles Russell's very rare little pamphlet of cricket recollections was dedicated, in 1879, to these old friends, 'once champions of cricket, now guardians of that game', with this stanza beneath:—
Old Damon and old Pythias
Were always found together:
I never saw those chums apart
In smooth or stormy weather.
But Ponsonby and Grimston
Triumphantly compare
With that somewhat sentimental
Superannuated pair.—Harrow Classic.
I should like to say much more of Ponsonby and Grimston, but, if at all, it must be in another book. They belong to the great round-arm period—from Lillywhite to Southerton, say,—of which there is as
