doubtless, anterior to trap-ball. The trap, indeed, carries with it an air of refinement in the 'march of mechanism'.
They who are acquainted with some of the remote and unfrequented villages of England, where the primitive manners, customs, and games of our ancestors survive in the perfection of rude and unadulterated simplicity, must have remarked the lads playing at a game which is the same in its outline and principal features as the consummate piece of perfection that at this day is the glory of Lord's, and the pride of English athletae—I mean the one in which a single stick is appointed for a wicket, ditto for a bat, and the same repeated, of about three inches in length, for a ball. If this be not the original of the game of cricket, it is a plebeian imitation of it.
My purpose, however, is not to search into the antiquities of cricketing, but to record my recollections of some of the most eminent professors of my favourite pastime who have figured on the public arena since the year 1776, when I might be about twelve years of age. From that period till within a few seasons past, I have constantly been 'at the receipt of custom' when any rousing match has been toward; and being now a veteran, and laid up in ordinary, I may be allowed the vanity of the quotation,
Quorum magna pars fui.[1]
I was born at Hambledon, in Hampshire—the
- ↑ I learned a little Latin when I was a boy of a worthy old Jesuit, but I was a better hand at the fiddle; and many a time have I taught the gipsys a tune during their annual visits to our village, thereby purchasing the security of our poultry-yard. When the hand of the destroyer was stretched forth over the neighbouring roosts, our little Goshen was always passed by.
