patron so insufficient, talked about cricket in a very proper spirit in 1740.[1] 'If you have a right ambition you will desire to excell all boys of your age at cricket ... as well as in learning.' That is the right style of fatherly counsel; but Philip Chesterfield never came to 'European reputation as mid-wicket-on,' like a hero of Mr. James Payn's. Lord Chesterfield also alludes to 'your various occupations of Greek and cricket, Latin and pitch-farthing,' very justly coupling the nobler language with the nobler game. Already in the fourth book of the 'Dunciad,' line 592, Mr. Alexander Pope had sneered at cricket.[2] At what did Mr. Pope not sneer? The fair the wise, the manly,—Mrs. Arabella Fermor, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mr. Colley Cibber, and a delightful pastime,—he turns up his nose at them and at everyone and everything!
O le grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire!
See, he cries to Dulness, see —
The judge to dance his brother serjeant call,
The senator at cricket urge the ball.
Cricket was played at Eton early. Gray, writing to West, says, 'There is my Lords Sandwich and Halifax—they are statesmen—do you not remember them dirty boys playing at cricket?[3] In 1736 Walpole writes, 'I can't say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty.'[4] The bargee might have found an interview with Miss
- ↑ i. p. 197. Letter xxi.
- ↑ The bibliography of the Dunciad is not a subject to be rushed into rashly, nor in a note; but this must have been written between 1726-1735, there or thereabouts. The Scholiasts recognise Lord John Sackville as the Senator, and quote a familiar passage from Horace Walpole (June 8, 1747) about Cricketalia, instituted in his honour. We may, perhaps, regard Lord John as one of the early patrons of the game.
- ↑ Gray's Works, 1807, ii. p. 2. See also 'urge the flying ball,' which must refer, I think, to cricket. That ode was first published in 1747. Johnson carelessly paraphrases 'drives the hoop, or tosses the ball!'—C. W.
- ↑ To George Montagu, May 6, 1726.
