Defoe (1720) writes of the seer Duncan Campbell: "Marbles, which he used to call children's playing at bowls, yielded him mighty diversion; and he was so dexterous an artist at shooting that little alabaster globe from between the end of his forefinger and the knuckle of his thumb, that he seldom missed hitting plumb, as the boys call it, the marble he aimed at, though at the distance of two or three yards." The _locus classicus_ on marbles in the 19th century is in the trial in _Pickwick_, where Serjeant Buzfuz pathetically says of Master Bardell that "his 'alley tors' and his 'commoneys' are alike neglected; he forgets the long familiar cry of 'knuckle down,' and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is out." Many similar passages might be adduced to prove the former popularity of marbles with the young of all classes. In some rural parts of Sussex Good Friday was known as "marble-day" till late in the 19th century, since on that day both old and young, including many who would never have thought of playing marbles at other times, took part in the game. There was some traditional reason for regarding marbles as a Lenten sport--perhaps, as the Rev. W. D. Parish suggests, "to keep people from more boisterous and mischievous enjoyments." The origin of the game is concealed in the mists of antiquity. Marbles used by Egyptian and Roman children before the Christian era are to be seen in the British Museum. Probably some of the small stone spheres found among neolithic remains, which Evans (_Ancient Stone Implements_, 2nd ed., p. 420) admits to be too small for projectiles, are prehistoric marbles. It is commonly assumed that the game which the youthful Augustus, like other Roman children, played with nuts was a form of marbles, and that the Latin phrase of _relinquere nuces_, in the sense of putting away childish things, referred to this game. Strutt believed that nuts of the roundest sort were the original "marbles." The earliest unmistakable reference to marbles in literature seems to be in a French poem of the 12th century, quoted by Littré s.v. _Bille_.