The words “How featly” Strutt properly writes in place of a revolting old-fashioned oath in the original.
Strutt, therefore, in these lines quotes the word Cricket as first occurring in 1710.
About the same date Pope wrote,—
“The Judge to dance his brother Sergeants call,
The Senators at Cricket urge the ball.”
And Duncome, curious to observe, laying the scene of a match near Canterbury, wrote,—
“An ill-timed Cricket Match there did
At Bishops-bourne befal.”
Soame Jenyns, also, early in the same century, wrote in lines that showed that cricket was very much of a “sporting” amusement:—