The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860. Various
Perigal, Kipping, Owen, Mengredien, etc., of London,—are all players of the heroic sort, and the games recently played by some of them with Morphy are perhaps the finest on record. And certainly, whatever may be said of their tendency to promote careless and reckless play, the open and daring games are at once more interesting, more brief, and more conducive to the mental drill which has been claimed as a sufficient compensation for the outlay of thought and time demanded by chess.
We have already given some specimens of the Poetry of Chess. The Chess Philosophy itself has penetrated every direction of literature. From the time that Miranda is "discovered playing chess with Ferdinand" in Prospero's cell, (an early instance of "discovered mate,") the numberless Mirandas of Romance have played for and been played for mates. Chess has even its Mythology,—Caïssa being now, we believe, generally received at the Olympian Feasts. True, some one has been wicked enough to observe that all chess-stories are divisible into two classes,—in one a man plays for his own soul with the Devil, in the other the hero plays and wins a wife,—and to beg for a chess-story minus wives and devils; but such grumblers are worthless baggage, and ought to be checked. The Chess Library has now become an important collection. Time was, when, if one man had Staunton's "Handbook," Sarratt, Philidor, Walker's "Thousand Games," and Lewis on "The Game of Chess," he was regarded as uniting the character of a chess-scholar with that of the antiquary. But now we hear of Bledow of Berlin with eight hundred volumes on chess; and Professor George Allen, of the University of Pennsylvania, with more than a thousand! Such a literature has Chess collected about it since Paolo Boi, "the great Syracusan," as he was called, wrote what perhaps was the first work on chess, in the middle of the sixteenth century.
But such numbers of works on chess are very rare, and when the reader hears of an enormous chess library, he may be safe in recalling the story of Walker, whose friend turned chess author; seven years after, he boasted to Walker of the extent of his chess library, which, he affirmed consisted of one thousand volumes minus eighteen! It turned out that eighteen copies of his work had been sold, the rest of the edition remaining on his hands.
Though these old works are like galleries of old and valuable pictures to the chess enthusiast, they contain very little that is valuable to the general reader. Their terms and signs are to the uninitiated suggestive of a doctor's prescription. But the anecdotes of the game are, many of them, remarkable; and we believe they are known to have less of the mythical about them than those told in other departments. One who knows the game will feel that it is sufficiently absorbing to be woven in with the textures of government, of history, and of biography. It is of the nature of chess gradually to gather up all the senses and faculties of the player, so that for the time being he is an automaton chess-player, to whom life and death are abstractions.
How seriously, even religiously, the game has always been regarded by both Church and State may be judged by the account given by old Carrera of one whom we have already named as probably the earliest chess author, as he certainly is one of the greatest players known to fame. "In the time of our fathers," says this ancient enthusiast, "we had many famous players, of whom Paolo Boi, Sicilian, of the city of Syracuse, and commonly called the Syracusan, was considered the best. He was born in Syracuse of a rich and good family. When a boy, he made considerable progress in literature, for he had a very quick apprehension. He had a wonderful talent for the game of Chess; and having in a short time beaten all the players of the city, he resolved to go to Spain, where he heard there were famous players, honored and rewarded not only by noblemen, but also by Philip II., who took no small delight in the game. He first beat with ease all the players of Sicily, and was very superior in playing without seeing the board; for, playing at once three games blindfold, he conversed with others on different subjects. Before going into Spain, he travelled over all Italy, playing with the best players, amongst others with the Pultino, who was of equal force; they are therefore called by Salvio the light and glory of chess. He was the favorite of many Italian Princes, and particularly of the Duke of Urbino, and of several Cardinals, and even of Pope Pius V. himself, who would have given him a considerable benefice, if he would have become a clergyman; but this he declined, that he might follow his own inclinations. He afterward went to Venice, where a circumstance happened which had never occurred before: he played with a person and lost. Having afterward by himself examined the games with great care, and finding that he ought to have won, he was astonished that his adversary should have gained contrary to all reason, and suspected that he had used some secret art whereby he was prevented from seeing clearly; and as he was very devout, and was possessed of a rosary rich with many relics of saints, he resolved to play again with his antagonist, armed not only with the rosary, but strengthened by having previously received the sacrament: by these means he conquered his adversary, who, after his defeat, said to him these words,—'Thine is more potent than mine.'"
Some of the earliest writers on chess have given their idea of the all-absorbing nature of the game in the pleasant legend, that it was invented by the two Grecian brothers Ledo and Tyrrheno to alleviate the pangs of hunger with which they were pressed, and that, whilst playing it, they lived weeks without considering that they had eaten nothing.
But we need not any mythical proof of its competency in this direction. Hyde, in his History of the Saracens, relates with authenticity, that Al Amin, the Caliph of Bagdad, was engaged at chess with his freedman Kuthar, at the time when Al Mamun's forces were carrying on the siege of the city with a vigor which promised him success. When one rushed in to inform the Caliph of his danger, he cried,—"Let me alone, for I see checkmate against Kuthar!" Charles I. was at chess when he was informed of the decision of the Scots to sell him to the English, but only paused from his game long enough to receive the intelligence. King John was at chess when the deputies from Rouen came to inform him that Philip Augustus had besieged their city; but he would not hear them until he had finished the game. An old English MS. gives in the following sentence no very handsome picture of the chess-play of King John of England:—"John, son of King Henry, and Fulco felle at variance at Chestes, and John brake Fulco's head with the Chest-borde; and then Fulco gave him such a blow that he almost killed him." The laws of chess do not now permit the king such free range of the board. Dr. Robertson, in his History of Charles V., relates that John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, whilst he was playing with Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, was told that the Emperor had sentenced him to be beheaded before the gate of Wittenberg; he with great composure proceeded with the game, and, having beaten, expressed the usual satisfaction of a victor. He was not executed, however, but set at liberty, after five years' confinement, on petition of Mauritius. Sir Walter Raleigh said, "I wish to live no longer than I can play at chess." Rousseau speaks of himself as forcené des échecs, "mad after chess." Voltaire called it "the one, of all games, which does most honor to the human mind."
"When an Eastern guest was asked if he knew anything in the universe more beautiful than the gardens of his host, which lay, an ocean of green, broad, brilliant, enchanting, upon the flowery margin of the Euphrates, he replied,—'Yes, the chess-playing of El-Zuli.'" Surely, the compliment, though Oriental, is not without its strict truth. When Nature rises up to her culmination, the human brain, and there reveals her potencies of insight, foresight, analysis, memory, we are touched with a mystic beauty; the profile on the mountain-top is sublimer than the mountain. But we must heed well Mr. Morphy's advice, and not suffer this fascinating game to be more than a porter at the gate of the fairer garden. Only when it secures, not when it usurps the day, can it be regarded as a friend. There is a myriad-move problem, of which Society is the Sphinx, given us to solve.
He who masters chess without being mastered by it will find that it discovers essential principles. In the world he will see a larger chess-field, and one also shaped by the severest mathematics: the world is so because the brain of man is so,—motive and move, motive and move: they sum up life, all life,—from the aspen-leaf turning its back to the wind, to the ecstasy of a saint. See the array of pawns (forces, as the Hindoo calls them): the bodily presence and abilities, power of persistence, endurance, nerve, the eye, the larynx, the tongue, the senses. Do they not exist in life as on the board, to cut the way for royal or nobler pieces? Does not the Imperial Mind win its experiences, its insight, through the wear and tear of its physical twin? Is not the perfect soul "perfect through sufferings" for evermore? For every coin reason gets from Nature, the heart must leave a red drop impawned, the face must bear its scar. See, then, the powers of the human arena: here Castle, Knight,