There is no call for any one to vindicate this game. Chess is a great, worldwide fact. Wherever a highway is found, there, we may be sure, a reason existed for a highway. And when we find that the explorer on his northward voyage, pausing a day in Iceland, may pass his time in keen encounters with the natives,that the trader in Kamtschatka and China, unable to speak a word with the people surrounding him, yet holds a long evening's converse over the board which is polyglot,that the missionary returns from his pulpit, and the Hindoo from his widow-burning, to engage in a controversy without the theologicum odium attached,the game becomes authentic from its universality. It is akin to music, to love, to joy, in that it sets aside alike social caste and sectarian differences: kings and peasants, warriors and priests, lords and ladies, mingle over the board as they are represented upon it. "The earliest chess-men on the banks of the Sacred River were worshippers of Buddha; a player whose name and fame have grown into an Arabic proverb was a Moslem; a Hebrew Rabbi of renown, in and out of the Synagogues, wrote one of the finest chess poems extant; a Catholic priest of Spain has bestowed his name upon two openings; one of the foremost problemcomposers of the age is a Protestant clergyman of England; and the Greek Church numbers several cultivators of chess unrivaled in our day." It has received eulogies from Burton,from Castiglione,from Chatham, who, in reply to a compliment on a grand stroke of invention and successful oratory, said, "My success arose only from having been checkmated by discovery, the day before, at chess,"from Comenius, the grammarian,from Condé, Cowley, Denham, Justus van Effen, Sir Thomas Elyot, Guillim, Helvetia, Huarte, Sir William Jones, Leibnitz, Lydgate, Olaus Magnus, Pasquier, Sir Walter Raleigh, Rousseau, Voltaire, Samuel Warren, Warton, Franklin, Buckle, and many others of ability in every department of letters, philosophy, and art. We know of but one man of genius or learningwho has repudiated it,Montaigne. "Or if he [Alexander] played at chess," says Montaigne, "what string of his soul was not touched by this idle and childish game? I hate and avoid it because it is not play enough,that it is too grave and serious a diversion; and I am ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon that as would serve to much better uses." Looked at simply as a diversion, chess might naturally impress a man of intellectual earnestness thus. It is not a diversion; a recreation it may be called, but only as any variation from "the shop" is recreative. But chess has, by the experiences of many, sufficiently proved itself to have serious uses to men of thought, and in the way of an intellectual gymnasium. It is to the limbs and sinews of the mindprudence, foresight, memory, combination, analysisjust what a gymnasium is to the body. In it every muscle, every joint of the understanding is put under drill; and we know, that, where the mind does not have exercise for its body, but relics simply on idle cessation for its reinforcement, it will get too much lymph. Work is worship; but work without rest is idolatry. And rest is not, as some seem to think, a swoon, a slumber; it is an active receptivity, a masterly inactivity, which alone can deserve the fine name of Rest. Such, we believe, our favorite game secures better than all others. Besides this direct use, one who loves it finds many other incidental uses starting up about it,such as made Archbishop Magnus, the learned historian of Sweden, say, "Anger, love, peevishness, covetousness, dulness, idleness, and many other passions and motions of the minds of men may be discovered by it."But we promised not to vindicate chess, and shall leave this portion of our topic with the fine verse of the Oriental bard, Ibn ul Mûtazz:
"O thou whose cynic sneers express
The censure of our favorite chess,
Know that its skill is Science' self,
Its play distraction from distress.
It soothes the anxious lover's care;
It weans the drunkard from excess;
It counsels warriors in their art,
When dangers threat and perils press;
And yields us, when we need them most,
Companions in our loneliness."3
Now that the Persian poet has touched his lyre in our pages, we will not at once pass to any cold geographical or analytical realm of our subject, but pause awhile to cull some flowers of song which have sprung up on good English soil, which the feet of Caïssa have ever loved to press. No other games, and few other subjects, have gathered about them so rich a literature, or been intertwined with so much philological and historical lore. Not the least of this is to be found in the English classics, from which we propose to make one or two selections. We begin where English poetry begins, with Dan Chaucer; and from many beautiful conceits turning upon chess, we select one which must receive universal admiration. It is from the "Booke of the Duchesse."
"My boldnesse is turned to shame,
For false Fortune hath played a game
At the Chesse with me.
"At the Chesse with me she gan to play,
With her false draughts full divers
Sho stale on me, and toke my fers:4
And when I sawe my fers away,
Alas! I couth no longer play.
"Therewith Fortune said,' Checke here,
And mate in the mid point of the checkere
With a paune errant.' Alas!
Full craftier to play she was
Than Athalus, that made the game
First of the Chesse, so was his name."
In the early part of the seventeenth century, Thomas Middleton wrote a comedy styled "A Game at Chess," which was acted at the Globe (Shakspeare's) nine times successively. It seems to have been a severe tirade on the religious aspects of the times. The stage directions are significant: for example:Act I., Scene 1. Enter severally, in order of the game, the White and Black houses. Act II., Scene 1. Enter severally White Queen's Pawnes and Black Queen's Pawnes. The Prologue is as follows:
"What of the game called Chesse-play can be made
To make a stage-play shall this day be played.
First you shall see the men in order set,
States, and their Pawnes, when both the sides are met;
The houses well distinguished: in the game
Some men entrapt, and taken to their shame,
Bewarded by their play: and in the close
You shall see checque-mate given to Virtue's foes.
But the fair'st jewel that our hopes can decke
Is so to play our game t'avoid your checke."
The play excited indignation in the partisans of the Romish Church, and was not only suppressed by James I., but at the demand of the Queen its author was imprisoned, and was relieved only by a witty verse sent to the King.
The last which we have room to quote is anonymous, and of date near 1632. It may have been written by the celebrated divine, Thomas Jackson, of Corpus-Christi College, whose discourse comparing the visible world to a "Devil's Chess-board" evidently suggested the familiar etching in which Satan contends with a youth for his soul. The lines are entitled:
THE PAWNE"A lowly one I saw,
With aim fist high:
Ne to the righte,
Ne to the lefte
Veering, he marchèd by his Lawe,
The crested Knyghte passed by,
And haughty surplice-vest,
As onward toward his heste
With patient step he prest,
Soothfaste his eye:
Now, lo! the last doore yieldeth,
His hand a sceptre wieldeth,
A crowne his forehead shieldeth!
"So 'mergeth the true-hearted,
With aim fixt high,
From place obscure and lowly:
Veereth he nought;
His work he wroughte.
How many loyall paths be trod,
Soe many royall Crownes hath God!"
It is very clear that the pawns in chess represent the common soldiers in battle. The Germans call them "peasants" (Bauern); the Hindoos call them Baul, or "powers" (in the sense of force); and that each of these, if he can pursue his file to its end, should win a crown has always given to this game a popular stamp. These pawns are doubtless, next to knights, the most interesting pieces on the board: Philidor called them "the soul of chess."