Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/45

Rh And; in these lines, Virgil truly describes the right sort of man for a cricketer: plenty of life in him: not barely soul enough, as Robert South said, to keep his body from putrefaction; but, however large his stature, though he weigh twenty stone, like (we will not say Mr. Mynn), but an olden wicket-keeper, named Burt, or a certain infant genius in the same line, of good Cambridge town,—he must, like these worthies aforesaid, have vous in perfection, and be instinct with sense all over. Then, says Virgil, igneus est ollis vigor: "they must always have the steam up," otherwise the bard would have agreed with us, they are no good in an Eleven, because—

that is, you must suspend the laws of gravitation before they can stir,—dull clods of the valley, and so many stone of carrion; and then Virgil proceeds to describe what discipline will render those, who suffer the penalties of idleness or intemperance, fit to join the chosen few in the cricket-field:

Of course Elysium means "Lords," and læta arva, "the shooting fields." We make no apology for classical quotations. At the Universities, cricket