Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/17

Rh with Messrs. Longman, naturally desirous to lead a second advance movement, as we led the first, and to break the spell which, we had thus been assured, had for fifteen years chained down the invention of literary cricketers at the identical point where we left off; for, not a single rule or principle has yet been published in advance of our own; though more than one author has been kind enough to adopt (thinking, no doubt, the parents were dead) our ideas, and language too!

"Shall we ever make new books," asks Tristram Shandy, "as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?" No. But so common is the failing, that actually even this illustration of plagiarism Sterne stole from Burton!

Like solitary travellers from unknown lands, we are naturally desirous to offer some confirmation of statements, depending otherwise too much on our literary honour. We, happily, have received the following from—we believe the oldest player of the day who can be pronounced a good player still—Mr. E. H. Budd:—

"I return the proof-sheets of the History of my Contemporaries, and can truly say that they do indeed remind me of old times. I find one