STRUTT'S "SPORTS AND PASTIMES."*

JOSEPH &Burr's most abiding title to immortality is perhaps to be found in the general preface to the Waverley notes, where Sir Walter Scott freely admits that if he had not been called upon to edit Queenhoo Hall, Strutt's posthumous tale, Waverley would never have been completed. As Dr. Cox, Strutt's latest and best editor, puts it, "even if Strutt had no special merit of his own, he is well deserving of a niche in the temple of literary fame as the foster-parent of the immortal series of Waverley novels."

But Strutt's direct claims on the gratitude and remembrance of posterity have long been established on an unassailable basis. He was a considerable artist, an engraver whose work has steadily grown in repute, and, above all, an antiquarian whose exhaustive and accurate researches, embodied in a series of fascinating works, have not only endeared him to the general reader, but laid the historian of the social life of England under a perma,nent obligation. Our admiration of Strutt is only increased when we consider the disadvantages under which he laboured. He had to create books of refer- ence where none existed. He was hampered by ill health and by lack of encouragement, and he died when he was only fifty-three. Yet his amazing literary and artistic industry

• The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. By Joseph Strutt. A New Edition, much Enlarged and Corrected by J. Charles Cox, LL.D., F.S.A. London : Methuen and Co. f21.. net.3 did not monopolise his energies to the exclusion of other interests, or to the prejudice of other claims. He was a devoted husband, a good father, a deeply religious man, and

an active philanthropist. When he moved to Hertfordshire owing to failing health, he started first a Sunday, and then

a day, school, where he gave instruction twice in the week. Again, though in a sense a product, and a splendid product, of the British Museum, where he gathered the bulk of hia material, he was very far from being a mere compiler of hooka

or a transcriber of extracts. He grouped his information on definite principles, he brought criticism to bear on his authori- ties, and he frequently enriched his documentary evidence with illustrations drawn from his own personal experience and observation. For example, in the present work, in the section relating to archery, after giving grounds for his belief in the superiority of ancient bowmen, he continues :--

"I remember about four or five years back, at a meeting of the Society of Archers, in their ground near Bedford Square, the Turkish ambassador paid them a visit; and complained that the enclosure was by no means sufficiently extensive for a long shot ; he therefore went into the adjacent fields to show his dexterity ;, where I saw him shoot several arrows more than double the length of the archery ground, and his longest shot fell upwards of four hundred and eighty yards from his standing. The bow. he used was much shorter than those belonging to the English• archers ; and his arrows were those of the bolt kind, with round• heads made of wood. This distance rather exceeds the length our rhymist has given to the wands set up by Cloudesle and his companions, but then we are to recollect they shot with vast pre- cision to that distance, which the ambassador did not ; he had no mark, and his arrows fell exceedingly wide of each other."

It was not the Turkish Ambassador, as Dr. Cox remarks in his note, but his secretary, Mahmoud Effendi, who gave this display in the year 1795. But the passage serves to make good our point, which is that Strutt was not a mere book- maker, but a man with a genuine interest in his subject, who seldom failed to add to his authorities by comment or criticism or practical illustration. How suggestive his comments fre- quently are may be gathered from an observation on the game of sbovelboard. This game, he notices, "though now con- sidered as exceedingly vulgar, and practised by the lower classes of the people, was formerly in great repute among the nobility and gentry." Here Strutt touches upon a point of peculiar interest to the historian of games,—the influence of fashion on pastime. The curve of popularity in bicycling and

lawn-tennis exhibits these transitions in the most remarkable way. The former began low in the social scale, then invaded.

the "upper circles," who rapidly exhausted their enthusiasm, and is now as unfashionable amongst the nobility as shovel- board in the days when Strutt wrote. Lawn-tennis, again, has largely lost its social distinction, and a few years ago was played by the pupil teachers at Board-schools. In regard to his attitude generally, Strutt adhered loyally to the intention expressed in his opening remarks of avoiding all controversial arguments. He made no secret, however, of his antipathy to the baiting of animals, cock- fighting, &a, and other "national barbarisms," while in regard to Sunday observance he was very far from supporting the wholesale proscription of pastime on that day.

The superficial observer may find it difficult to reconcile Strutt's interest in sport and pastime with his mode of life and habit of body. There is no indication in the Life which... his son contributed to Nichols's Literary Anecdotes that he was ever proficient in games or took an active part.. in any athletic pursuit. On the contrary, he adopted a.

sedentary life almost as a boy, settled down as a student at the British Museum when he was twenty-one, and before reaching middle age was a martyr to asthma. His son- mentions that he was corpulent while still a comparatively

young man, and that he grew more and more unwieldy in his later years. But there is really nothing to excite our- surprise in this contrast between Strutt's tastes and his

physique. Here, as elsewhere, extremes meet, and at the. present day some of the most enthusiastic patrons and eulogists of sport and athletics cannot by any stretch of ' the imagination be associated with any distinction in the

the cricket or hunting field. Still, Strutt's limitations make themselves felt. He approaches his subject, in the main, from the point of view of the antiquarian. He is not concerned with niceties of technique, nor does he indulge in " apprecia- tions " of famous performers after the fashion of Nyren. The

note of lyrical fervour, of Pindaric ecstasy, is absent. His style, again, is solid, measured, and without special distinc- tion. It is curious to see that he anticipates in the use of the word " rhymist " a form to which modern sporting reporters are fatally addicted. But there are so many fine things in his quotations that he may be readily pardoned for avoiding any attempt to compete in picturesqueness of expression with his authorities. That he had a sense of humour is proved by the delightful, if somewhat irrelevant, passage in which he com- ments on the peculiar kind of language invented by the sportsmen of the Middle Ages to describe beasts or birds in company,—i.e., a bevy of roes, a sloth of boars, &c. Strutt continues :—

"It is well worthy of notice that this sort of phraseology was not confined to birds and beasts, and other parts of the brute creation, but it was extended to the various ranks and professions of men, as the specimens which I cannot help adding will suffi- ciently demonstrate ; the application of some of them will, I trust, be thought apt enough :—A state of princes; a skulk of friars ; a skulk of thieves; an observance of hermits ; a lying of pardoners; a subtiltie of serjeants ; an untruth of sompners ; a safe- guard of porters ; a stalk of foresters ; a blast of hunters; a draught of butlers; a temperance of cooks; a melody of harpers; a poverty of pipers; a drunkenship of coblers; a disguising of taylors ; a wandering of tinkers; a malepertness of pedlars; a fighting of beggars ; a rayful (that is, a netful) of knaves ; a blush of boys; a bevy of ladies; a nonpatience of wives a gagle of women; a gagle of geese ; a superfluity of nuns Dr. Cox has done his work exceedingly well. He has very wisely refrained from attempting to bring the book "up to date," or turn it into an encyclopaedia of sports and pastimes.

He has corrected a few obvious mistakes and rash conjectures, rewritten the descriptions of certain ball games which were quite inadequate, and added a quantity of valuable supple- mentary illustrative matter from sources akin to those con- sulted by Strutt. How truly these additions are kept within the picture, so to speak, and harmonise with the spirit of Strutt, may be judged from the brilliant extract from Wylie's "Gilds and Mysteries" on p. x.xxii., and the account of foot- racing at wedding festivities in the North of England from the late Canon Atkinson's Forty Years in a Moorland Parish on p. 67. The decision to reproduce Strutt's characteristic illustrations in monochrome is, we think, well justified in view of the haphazard way the plates were coloured in the original edition. We are not altogether reconciled to the plan by which Dr. Cox's additions are incorporated in the text with an asterisk at the head of each paragraph. In spite of the uni- formity of type thus secured, it gives the page a fidgety look.

Dr. Con's omission to accent his Greek quotations is un- scholarly, though some great scholars sanction the practice. With these deductions the production of the book reflects great credit on editor and publishers. Type and paper are excellent, and the volume, though of folio size, is easy to handle.