missed Lord F. Beauclerk's head, and spoiled his nerve for bowling ever after. But, what if these several balls had really hit? who knows whether the respective skulls might not have stood the shock, as in a case which I witnessed in Oxford, in 1835; when one Richard Blucher, a Cowley bowler, was hit on the head by a clean half-volley, from the bat of Henry Daubeny—than whom few Wykehamists used (fuit!) to hit with better eye or stronger arm. Still "Richard was himself again" the very next day; for, we saw him with his head tied up, bowling at shillings as industriously as ever. Some skulls stand a great deal. Witness the sprigs of Shillelah at Donnibrook fair; still most indubitably tender is the face; as also—which horresco referens; and here let me tell wicket-keepers and long-stops especially, that a cricket jacket made long and full, with pockets to hold a handkerchief sufficiently in front, is a precaution not to be despised; though "the race of inventive men" have also devised a cross-bar india-rubber guard, aptly described in Achilles' threat to Thersites, in the Iliad.[1]
The most alarming accident I ever saw occurred in one of the many matches played by the Lansdown Club against Mr. E. H. Budd's Eleven, at Purton, in 1835. Two of the Lansdown players
- ↑ Hom. Il. ii. 262
