Cricket may be older than its name, but erroneously suppose that the name of Cricket occurs in no author in the English language of an earlier date than Thomas D'Urfey, who, in his "Pills to purge Melancholy," writes thus:—
"Herr was the prettiest fellow
At foot-ball and at Cricket;
At hunting chase or nimble race
How featly Herr could prick it."
The words "How featly" Strutt properly writes in place of a revolting old-fashioned oath in the original.
Strutt, therefore, in these lines quotes the word Cricket as first occurring in 1710.
About the same date Pope wrote,—
"The Judge to dance his brother Sergeants call,
The Senators at Cricket urge the ball."
And Duncome, curious to observe, laying the scene of a match near Canterbury, wrote,—
"An ill-timed Cricket Match there did
At Bishops-bourne befal."
Soame Jenyns, also, early in the same century, wrote in lines that showed that cricket was very much of a "sporting" amusement:—
"England, when once of peace and wealth possessed,
