Beeton’s Handy Book of Games
Of all in-door amusements , commend us to billiards. ” Let us to billiards, Charmian, ” cries Cleopatra, in the absence of her beloved Antony . We admire the taste of the lady, though we doubt whether the noble game was among the regular recreations of the Egyptian court ; indeed, we fancy that the precise period of its invention is not certainly known . I have been told that the Chinese lay claim to the possession of a game similar to billiards ; but, never having been in China, I cannot vouch for the truth of the story. Its introduction into British India and the Australian Islands is certainly due to British enterprise. All the knowledge we possess of its introduction is, that it was probably invented by the Dutch, from whom the French, the Germans, and the Italians soon learned it, and that it presently afterwards found its way into our own tight little island