Page:Cricket (Steel, Lyttelton).djvu/31

Rh are umpires in their usual places; the scores are kept by men who cut notches in tally-sticks. Such 'notches' were 'got' by 'Miss Wicket,' a sportive young lady in a somewhat later caricature (p. 7). The ball (1770) has heavy cross-seams. But a silver ball, about a hundred years old, used as a snuff-box by the Vine Club at Sevenoaks, is marked with seams like those of to-day. Miss Wicket, also, carries a curved bat, but it has developed beyond the rustic crooked stick, and more nearly resembles some of the old curved bats at Lord's, with which a strong man must have hit prodigious skyers. We may doubt if bats were ever such 'three-man beetles' as the players in an undated but contemporary picture at Lord's do fillip withal. The fields, in this curious piece, are all in a line at square-leg, and disappear in a distance unconscious of perspective.

Cricket had even before this date reached that height of prosperity which provokes the attention of moralists. 'Here is a fine morning: let us go and put down some form of enjoyment,' says the moralist. In 1743 a writer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' was moved to allege that 'the exercise may be strained too far. . . . Cricket is certainly a very good and wholesome exercise, yet it may be abused if either great or little people make it their business.' The chief complaint is that great and little people play together—butchers and baronets. Cricket 'propagates a spirit of idleness at the very time when, with the utmost industry, our debts, taxes, and decay of trade will scarcely allow us to get bread.' The Lydians, according to Herodotus, invented games to make them forget the scarcity of bread. But the gentleman in the magazine is much more austere than Herodotus. 'The advertisements most impudently recite that great sums are laid'; and it was, indeed, customary to announce a match for 500l. or 1,000l. Whether these sums were not drawn on Fancy's exchequer, at least in many cases, we may reasonably doubt. In his 'English Game of Cricket' (p. 138) the learned Mr. Box quotes a tale of betting in 1711, from a document which he does not describe. It appears that in 1711 the county of Kent played All England,