Willow and Leather : a Book of Praise. By E.
T. Lucas. (Arrowsmilh, Bristol.)—Mr. Lucas has a very light and pleasant touch, and the prose essays that furnish out most of this mis- cellany ought to find a great many readers. They are not very serious studies of the game ; some descend even to cricket on the ice, and 'board-ship cricket; but so long as there is cricket in any shape or form, Mr. Lucas revels in the delights and humours of it. He has a fine historic sense, too, of the game and its dignities, which leads him to hunt up the old enlogiums upon the heroes of Hambledon,—Beldham and Nyren, and David Harris, the famous potter whose swift underhands used with their "peculiar curl to "grind men's fingers against the bat." By the way, since Mr. Lucas is curious of such things, we commend him to the delight- ful epitaph on old Cobbett, to be seen on the firm's price list, also to the fact that the great Lillywhite's bat is cherished at that establishment. But it was not to Mr. Lucas's prose that we looked with most curiosity. Be has rhymed. a good deal about cricket, and cricket, in our opinion, still caret vats sacro. Mr. Norman Gale never seemed to us quite to achieve success. Men have written admirably of fishing, hunting, and even of golf ; passably of football; but we never yet saw the cricket poem that expressed the emotions of the game. Mr. Lucas, good as be is„ also falls short of our ideal ; here is his nearest approach to it :— ■ • Neu may seek emotions.
Taste them by the million; But—to leap to meet her, Meet the flying ball, Grandly then to Hit her Over the pavilion Guars a thrill that's sweeter, Sweeter than them all:*
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