'The Coming of W. G.,' and after that I cannot find it possible to chide him for putting a ball rather than a bat into the great hand.

For a complete account of the extraordinary doings of this greatest of three great Gloucestershire brothers we have to look up that book which really is a worthy memorial to him-'The Memorial Biography of W. G. Grace,' by Lord Hawke, Lord Harris, and Sir Home Gordon; while a most useful and complete account is Mr F. S. Ashley Cooper's W. G. Grace, Cricketer.' As the record of a big story in little space it is not to be beaten. Another very excellent work is 'The Jubilee Book of Cricket,' ascribed to the Jam Sahib, as he now is, but popularly presumed to have been principally written by C. B. Fry. There again the fresh idea of cricket brought in by W. G.' is insisted on: He revolutionised cricket. He turned it from an accomplishment into a science; he united in his mighty self all the good points of all the good players and made utility the criterion of style.'

The great and admirable Badminton Library book of cricket, which Mr R. H. Lyttelton edited and to which many hands adept with the bat contributed, strikes the same note that W. G. really made a new game of cricket.

Whether he ever read a book on cricket himself may be doubted; and how much conscious thought he gave the game may be questioned too. Most of his genius, we may suspect, came to him unconsciously, without effort, almost in spite of himself. Nevertheless, there have been few, if any, helps to the learner more valuable than those given in simple words in his chapter in the Badminton Book headed 'How to Score. His instructions for dealing with the bowling on wickets of different character and pace are very good because they are so clear. One would say of Grace that he was not very subtle, although he was very shrewd; and it is doubtful whether some of our modern 'thinking cricketers' do not think too much, notably-I had almost written 'nobly 'some of those who come from the land of the kangaroo. I must return to that 'Noble' theme.

It was Fry, perhaps, who penned that whole-hearted appreciation of Grace in Ranji's book.' All through the vast literature we see this generous appraisal of W. G.

as on a lonely pinnacle of greatness. It is generously, ungrudgingly lavished. None dares to throw a doubt at it! Fry himself wrote 'The Book of Cricket,' valuable both for his own instructions and for the 'action pictures illustrating it, in the last year of the last century. Have you read Fry's book?' some one at Lord's asked W. G. 'No,' was the answer. 'I was afraid to read it. I was afraid Charles might bowl me out with a long hop while I was trying to remember what he said I ought to do with it.' All cricket instruction by book has been simplified and clarified by the 'action photographs' which were first, I believe, used for the purpose in this book of Fry's. Mr Beldham, who used to play for Middlesex, if I remember right, was-I hope is a very fine photographer, and he too brought out a good and finely illustrated book: 'Great Batsmen: Their Methods at a Glance.'

،

It is evidence of the mass of writing about cricket that I have not yet named one who has perhaps written most of all and has done the game as good service as any man living, Mr Pelham Warner, with a wise head under a harlequin cap. For one useful and strenuous work, he has edited the weekly paper, 'The Cricketer,' for years. He has written Cricket Reminiscences' specially so-called, and many more cricket reminiscences by other titles; but the best of them all, to my thinking, and the best of their very good and pleasant kind ever done, are the earlier chapters in 'My Cricketing Life.' No one else, I think, has caught quite so well, or told so infectiously and so sympathetically, the whole-souled zeal for the game of that curious creature, the human boy. All the pages of the book are good, but the best are those about days of long ago.

Why is that? Why is it that in all the immense literature of cricket the notes that go right home to us are those that have some knell of sadness, some regret? I find the fact so, though I scarcely even suggest a reason. If we go with Mr Eric Parker, who the other day pubished an anthology under the title of Between the Wickets,' we shall confirm that rather melancholic opinion. It was a great task that he set himself, to cull the finest flowers of so vast and varied a garden. For my own part, I think I should have liked his book even

better-grateful though I am to him as it is—had he made his extracts rather longer and rather fewer. I find them somewhat 'snippety.' No doubt, however, there are many others who like their literary meat small-minced. Let them have their collops.

But in the whole of that collection of grave and gay, it seems to me that those which move and touch our hearts warmly are the pathetic pieces. Many versifiers in many moods have taken the game as their theme or a factor of it--perhaps Mr Andrew Lang most successfully-yet none I find quite satisfying except those who write in sorrow. There are three In Memoriam' sets of verses, to which I know I shall turn and turn again, when I take up the book. First, there is that singular yet surely most sincere elegy of W. J. Prowse over the great Alfred Mynn. How quaint is its opening stanza: 'Jackson's pace is very fearful, Willsher's hand is very high; William Caffyn has good judgment, and an admirable eye; Jemmy Grundy's cool and clever, almost always on the spot-'

So on. Still the Monarch of all bowlers, to my mind, was Alfred Mynn,' and how truly touching its last:

'With his tall and stately presence, with his nobly moulded form,

His broad hand was ever open, his brave heart was ever

warm;

All were proud of him, all loved him. As the changing seasons pass,

As our champion lies a-sleeping underneath yon Kentish grass,

Proudly, sadly, we will name him: to forget him were a sin ; Lightly lie the turf upon thee, kind and manly Alfred Mynn!'

I never read this but I find myself long afterwards, at short intervals, repeating to myself the last line. Then, more modern and, therefore, with less of relief to their sadness from any turn of words which wins our hearts to a smile, are those two moving poems of E. E. Bowen, from 'Harrow Songs and Verses,' the first to the memory of Mr Robert (Bob) Grimston, the second to that of Mr Frederick (Fred) Ponsonby:

'Still the balls ring upon the sunlit grass,

Still the big elms, deep shadowed, watch the play-'

So begins that to 'R. G.' Then this to F. P.':
"Our friend and he, when thrills of warmer spring

Lent health and voice to boyish frame and tongue.'

It is surely curious that in the best that has been written of the game which comes from roots deep down in the soil of our England, we like to think of as 'Merry,' there should always be this echo of pathos.

I have named a few of the attempts to use cricket as a background for fiction. The use, or abuse, of cricket incidentally made by some of our greatest writers in that kind is remarkable. Dickens, at his all too early death, is credited with leaving one immortal puzzle unsolved 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' He did, in fact, bequeath us another at least as difficult-his conception of a game of cricket. If we study with the most absorbed contemplation, and with our mental faculties at their brightest, his description of the notorious 'Test' between Dingley Dell and All Muggleton, we shall still be obliged to confess ourselves unable to come to a clear understanding of it. A most interesting experiment for pious Dickensians would be an exhibition game conducted on what they conceive to be the lines of this very famous match. And Dickens, in general, we can all understand. The understanding of another and rather different novelist, George Meredith, is less universal. There are those who confess themselves unable to interpret him. But even the strictest sect of the Meredithians might be at a loss to get a very distinct idea of the game called cricket from the match introduced in Evan Harrington.' That gentle and charming lady, Miss Mitford, in 'Our Village,' gives us more confidence that she was a real judge of the game.

I have named some of the fiction writers. The others, the historians and the teachers, are too many even for mention. The teaching of the cricketer by book began, I think, with Nyren's 'Young Cricketer's Tutor' in 1832nearly a century back. Another exhibition match, to follow the Pickwickian, here suggests itself, a match to be played in 1932, the centenary of the 'Cricketer's Tutor,' with the implements, with the manner of underhand bowling, and in the costumes of that period. The top hat was, I believe, the feature of the costume.

To Harry Hall, gingerbread baker of Farnham, is ascribed, to his undying fame, the credit of discovering the virtue of the left elbow high and forward and, as a natural consequence, of the straight bat. He used to give peripatetic lectures to young students. And from the time of Nyren onward, has continued, not a dropping, but a continually increasing, fire of tuition by book, more or less in response to changing conditions of the game, but often inspired by the merely personal desire of the writers to give expression to their views. Later than Harry Hall, however, of whom Nyren tells us that he once played against him and 'found him a very fair player, but nothing remarkable,' we do not hear of any more of these travelling instructors of cricketing pupils. On paper there was no end to them. We should much like to hear, but never shall, any more than we shall know what song the Sirens sang,' the instruction given to 'Little Tom Clement,' of whom no less famous a man than the Reverend Gilbert White of Selborne writes: 'Little Tom Clement is visiting at Petersfield, where he plays much at cricket: Tom bats; his grandmother bowls; and his great-grandmother watches out!!' This was in 1786. Did these admirable and venerable ladies bring up their scion according to the blameless doctrine of the great gingerbread baker? We cannot tell, for the name of 'Little Tom Clement,' grown big, is not on the roll of cricketing fame.

So, after Nyren, to name one or two of the teachers, we have Felix on the Bat,' by Felix the Kentish man, in 1845; then Pycroft with his Cricket Field,' in 1851; and in the same year, Bolland with Cricket Notes.' We have passed, we may observe, by this time from underhand bowling to round-arm, in spite of the strictures and gloomy forecasts of Nyren. Below the elbow,' however, is still the rule; on occasion, it may be, already broken, and shortly to be breached beyond repair by the action of a courageous umpire of the gentle but glorious name of Lillywhite. We shall remember 'Jackson's pace is very fearful; Willsher's hand is very high.'

John Lillywhite, personal friend, be it noted, of this high-handed one, in a great match, Surrey versus England at the Oval, in 1862, 'no-balled' Willsher five times in succession; and might, for all we know, have gone on