When once the eighteenth century is reached cricket begins to find mention in literature. Clearly the game was rising in the world and was being taken up, like the poets of the period, by patrons. Lord Chesterfield, whom Dr. Johnson found a patron so insufficient, talked about cricket in a very proper spirit in 1740.[16] ‘If you have a right ambition you will desire to excell all boys of your age at cricket ... as well as in learning.’ That is the right style of fatherly counsel; but Philip Stanhope never came to ‘European reputation as mid-wicket-on,’ like a hero of Mr. James Payn’s. Lord Chesterfield also alludes to ‘your various occupations of Greek and cricket, Latin and pitch-farthing,’ very justly coupling the nobler language with the nobler game. Already in the fourth book of the ‘Dunciad,’ line 592, Mr. Alexander Pope had sneered at cricket.[17] At what did Mr. Pope not sneer? The fair, the wise, the manly,--Mrs. Arabella Fermor, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mr. Colley Cibber, and a delightful pastime,--he turns up his nose at them and at everyone and everything! _O le grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire!_ See, he cries to Dulness, see-- The judge to dance his brother serjeant call, The senator at cricket urge the ball. Cricket was played at Eton early. Gray, writing to West, says, ‘There is my Lords Sandwich and Halifax--they are statesmen--do you not remember them dirty boys playing at cricket?’[18] In 1736 Walpole writes, ‘I can’t say I am sorry I was never quite a school-boy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty.’[19] The bargee might have found an interview with Miss Horace pretty to recollect, but when Horace pretends that he might have been in the Eleven if he liked, the absurdity becomes too glaring. We are reminded of Charles Lamb’s ‘Here is Wordsworth saying he might have written “Hamlet” if he had had the “mind.”’ Cowper pretends (in 1781) that ‘as a boy I excelled at cricket and football,’ but he adds, with perfect truth, ‘the fame I acquired by achievements that way is long since forgotten.’ The author of the ‘Task,’ and of a good many hymns, was no Mynn nor Grace. We shall find but few of the English poets distinguished as cricketers, or fond of tuning the lyre to sing Pindaric strains of batters and bowlers. Byron tells a friend how they ‘together joined in cricket’s manly toil’ (1807). Another noble exception is George Huddesford,[20] author of ‘Salmagundi’ (1791, p. 66)-- But come, thou genial son of spring Whitsuntide, and with thee bring _Cricket_, nimble boy and light, In slippers red and drawers white, Who o’er the nicely measured land Ranges around his comely band, Alert to intercept each blow, Each motion of the wary foe.