But even those few novelists who have included cricket in their panorama of the period appear woefully ignorant of the management of the game. What a sad mess Dickens made of it, and how well he might have done it! How entertaining Mr Winkle might have been behind the wicket: what sublime decisions he would have given as an umpire! But, no: Muggleton play Dingley Dell, and the great Podder “blocked the doubtful balls, missed the bad ones, took the good ones and sent them flying to all parts of the field,” which is surely the most quaint procedure that any batsman has ever followed; and as a climax Dingley Dell give in and allow the superior prowess of all Muggleton, apparently before they have had their own innings--an action without precedent in the annals of the game. And so it has happened that our one complete picture of the Homeric days has come to us not from the novelists, the official recorders of the hour, but from John Nyren, who wrote without any thought of posterity a guide-book for the young cricketer. There are some books that, like wine, acquire qualities with the passage of time, and for us to-day the _Cricketer’s Tutor_ possesses a value that it did not have for those in whose service it was written. To the young blood of 1840 it was merely a manual, a sort of field service regulations; to-day it is a piece of literature; it interprets a period; it reveals a personality. As we read John Nyren’s advice we can see how the game was played in 1820 on rough pitches, without pads, in top hats, and with a courage the extent of which may be gauged from the instructions that he gives to long-stop: When the ball does not come to his hand with a fair bound, he must go down upon his right knee with his hands before him: then in case these should miss it, his body will form a bulwark and arrest its further progress. In those days we learn that spectators were patient folk who sat on backless seats, drank porter, smoked long pipes, and made bets about the match. There was leisure then, and John Nyren believed that the batsman should wait to make his runs till bowler and fieldsmen were exhausted: I would strongly recommend the young batsman to turn his attention to stopping: for by acting this part well, he becomes a serious antagonist to the bowler; who, when he sees a man coming in that he knows will stop all his length balls with ease, is always in a degree disheartened. He has no affection for such a customer. Besides, in this accomplishment lies the distinction between the scientific and the random batsman.