Page:The Cricket Field (1854).djvu/98

Lumpy, of moderate pace might be played with some effect, even behind the crease; but David Harris, with pace, pitch, and rapid rise combined, imperatively demanded a new invention, and such was forward play about 1800. Old Fennex, who died, alas! in a Middlesex workhouse, aged eighty, in 1839 (had his conduct been as straightforward and upright as his bat, he would have known a better end), always declared that he was the first, and remained long without followers; and no small praise is due to the boldness and originality that set at nought the received maxims of his forefathers before he was born or thought of; daring to try things that, had they been ordinarily reasonable, would not, of course, have been ignored by Frame, by Purchase, nor by Small. The world wants such men as Fennex; men, who will shake off the prejudices of birth, parentage, and education, and boldly declare that age has taught them wisdom, and that the policy of their predecessors, however expensively stereotyped, must be revised and corrected and adapted to the demands of a more inquiring generation. "My father," said Fennex, "asked me how I came by that new play, reaching out as no one ever saw before." The same style he lived to see practised, not elegantly, but with wonderful power and effect by Lambert, "a most severe and resolute hitter;" and Fennex also boasted that he had a