James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual 1876

C H A P T E R V . E A R L Y C R IC K E T L IT E R A T U R E . I have promised to write something about cricket for this year’ s “ Annual,’ ' and the question in my mind is, “ What on earth it is to be about? For, in my opinion, there is not a single subject within the whole range of literature which is so utterly and absurdly overwritten, considering its small importance from a literary point of view, as the game in question. I have done my share in over-writing it, and so ought not to be the first to complain, but, wherever the fault may be, and whoever may be answerable for it, the fact is so, and all cricketers know it. Possibly, angling may be a more flagrant offender than even cricket, considered as a sport productive o f silly writing and dreary reading, but then the subject is, relatively speaking, a wide one, and Mr. J. II. Smith’ s Catalogue o f 1S57, containing the names of more than 300 books, to which many more have since been added, has a better claim to excellence than the Catalogue which will inevitably be compiled, sooner or later, of the monstrous diatribes which have been written during the last hundred and twenty years about cricket. The earlier books on the subject were, of course, few and far between. The first of all, James Love’ s poem, which gives a fa ll description of the first known match, dates from 1754, and was published at Edinburgh. Some years ago, I gave to the public a tolerably copious account o f this curious and very accurate poem, which is written in three books, containing in all 318 lines, and I have accordingly no right to go over the same ground again, but I am really tempted now and then to replenish it in a cheap form, in order to show how little the game has altered in any sub­ stantial degree since it first attracted public attention. The shape, height, and even number of the stumps has been changed ; round-hand bowling has taken the place of underhand, and a straight bat has been substituted for one with a slight curve in it, but beyond this, cricket in 1875 and cricket in 1746 are the same game, played in the same way and using the same terms. The poem follows the style of Pope, or rather of Akenside, who had a great reputation at the time it was published, and who is, perhaps, too little read in these days ; but it has little or no merit, unless it is looked at from a cricketing point of view. This curious poem had the odd result o f giving to future ages all the details o f the Kent and England match in 1746, wh ile the subsequent annals of cricket are utterly bare for twenty-five years, and destitute of all detail till an even later period. And so the heroes of 1746 appeared upon the stage once and for all, for their days o f cricket were over before the curtain rose again. In 1779 there appeared, as I find from catalogues, a political poem , called the “ Noble Cricketers,” addressed to two of the oldest Lords in H is Majesty’s Three Kingdoms. I f it had occurred thirty years earlier, this would not have been an unnatural title, as Frederick Lew'is, Prince of Wales, who died before his father in 1751, and who was an important political personage after a fashion, was greatly attached to the game, and