As to the silence of the early poets and dramatists on the game of cricket--and no one conversant with English literature would expect to find it except in some casual allusion or illustration in an old play--this silence we can confirm on the best authority. What if we presumed to advance that the early dramatists, one and all, ignore the very name of cricket. How bold a negative! So rare are certain old plays that a hundred pounds have been paid by the Duke of Devonshire for a single copy of a few loose and soiled leaves; and shall we pretend to have dived among such hidden stores? We are so fortunate as to be favoured with the assistance of the Rev. John Mitford and our loving cousin John Payne Collier, two English scholars, most deeply versed in early literature, and no bad judges of cricket; and since these two scholars have never met with any mention of cricket in the early dramatists, nor in any author earlier than 1685, there is, indeed, much reason to believe that “Cricket” is a word that does not occur in any English author before the year 1685. But though it occurs not in any English author, is it found in no rare manuscript yet unpublished? We shall see. Now as regards the silence of the early poets, a game like cricket might certainly exist without falling in with the allusions or topics of poetical writers. Still, if we actually find distinct catalogues and enumerations of English games before the date of 1685, and Cricket is omitted, the suspicion that Cricket was not then the popular name of one of the many games of ball (not that the game itself was positively unknown) is strongly confirmed. Six such catalogues are preserved; one in the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” a second in a well-known treatise of James I., and a third in the “Cotswold Games,” with three others. I. For the first catalogue, Strutt reminds us of the set of rules from the hand of James I. for the “nurture and conduct of an heir-apparent to the throne,” addressed to his eldest son, Henry Prince of Wales, called the ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΟΝ ΔΩΡΟΝ, or a “Kinge’s Christian Dutie towards God.” Herein the king forbids gaming and rough play: “As to diceing, I think it becometh best deboshed souldiers to play on the heads of their drums. As to the foote-ball, it is meeter for laming, than making able, the users thereof.” But a special commendation is given to certain games of ball; “playing at the catch or tennis, palle-malle, and _such like other_ fair and pleasant _field-games_.” Certainly cricket may have been included under the last general expression, though by no means a fashionable game in James’s reign.