"Then the wise men of the kingdom set about to compose the game Shatranji, representing the battle of Ghav and Talachand.
"The sorrowful mother contemplates this game, and by daily playing it, brings into her mind the battle and death of her son Talachand. She could not forbear to torment herself with the remembrance of his death, and every day for a long time, to give herself up to the meditation thereof."—SHAHNAMA.
———
>From the early ages of the Christian era back to the times of Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle, traditions, concerning the origin of this wonderful game have come down to us of a very various and conflicting character; the Arabian and Persian historians from the commentators on the Koran interdict against lots and images to the days of the Persian Shahnama of Firdausi and the Asiatic Society's famous manuscript, have spoken of the origin and history of chess, Aben Ezra, the famous Rabbi, contemporary of Maimonides, Jacobus de Cessolus the Monk of Picardy, Ruy Lopez the Spanish priest, Damiano the Portuguese Apothecary, Gustavus Selenus (the Duke of Luneburg), Dr. Salvic, Carrera, and the writers of the Italian school, have all contributed to the remarkably delusive and often mythical theories propounded in regard to it. In our own Country we have them from Chaucer, Lydgate, Caxton, Barbiere and the Encyclopaediasts, and Pope writing just before knowledge of the Sanskrit became imparted among the learned, and ere the classical Sir William Jones had began to enlighten us, thought probably he had set the matter at rest by declaring that the invention of chess, (which we had and could enjoy without caring to know from whence it came) and which was an imperishable monument of the wisdom of its unknown founder, involved a problem which never would be solved.
———
PROGRESS OF CHESS
It has been a subject of regret with writers that complete games of chess cannot be found for the earlier ages, and it has been suggested that a few well annotated games of the great Eastern players of one thousand years ago, and of the rival champions of Spain, Italy and Sicily in the Sixteenth century would be of more interest than all the problems and positions handed down to us in existence and, it certainly would be pleasing and instructive to be able to compare the styles Ali Suli, Adali, Lajlaj, Abbas and Razi, the great players of the Golden Age of Arabian Literature, and that of Ali Shatranji of Timur's Court and Ruy Lopez, Leonardo and Paolo Boi with those of Philidor and the leaders of the Nineteenth century.
The first half of the Nineteenth century witnessed the commencement of Press notice, and the growth of a literature for chess, and was distinguished by the number of works devoted to the play of the game, not half a score of books could be traced in England before Philidor's, besides which Caxton, 1474, dedicated to the Duke of Clarence, Rowbotham, 1561, to the Earl of Leicester, and Saul and Barbiere, 1617 and 1640, to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, which constitute the most noted works recorded, conveyed but little knowledge concerning the game, and were scarcely more than translations of foreign works from that of Jacobus de Cesso1us, 1290, and others, and were rather moralities and philosophical treatises than works of practical utility from a scientific point of view.
During the second half, the advance in the appreciation and practice of chess has been yet more astonishing as compared with the single club in St. James' Street, and the meeting place for chess players in St. Martin's Lane, which existed in Philidor's time, and the thirty clubs or so which had arisen by 1851, we have now at least five hundred, and as against the earliest chess columns in the Lancet, Bell's Life, and the Illustrated London News, we can specify near one hundred. It is among the middle and humbler classes that the spread of a taste for chess has been most apparent, with the fashionable or higher classes, so far as any manifestation of public interest or support is to be taken as a criterion, its appreciation has died out, and for twenty noble names among its patrons in Philidor's time, we cannot reckon one in ours. Another singular feature is the grave diminution in the recognized number of able exponents, commonly called Masters, which in the British list are reduced to less than a third of the well-known names of 1862. The support of chess, trifling as it is, comes from about a score of Her Majesty's subjects, and the total in a year does not now equal a sum very usual in a glove fight, or a Championship Billiard match, and the sums provided in a generation by our present machinery would not equal the value of one Al Mamun's musk balls or the rewards to Ruy Lopez for a single match.
The time allowed for consideration of the moves in chess, and the management of the clocks used to regulate such is a most important element in estimating the relative strength of chess players. So important, in fact, that pure chess, and chess with clocks is found by experience to be a very different thing with certain players. Bird finds the clocks more trouble than the chess, and as everybody knows is heavily handicapped by them, hence his force and success in ordinary play is far greater than in tournaments. Take the time limit alone for two players of equal reputation, who may not be disturbed or distracted by the clocks, a difference in the time limit of ten or even five moves an hour would in some cases turn the scale between them. Passing over the faster Bird; and other English players who prefer the slower rate take a very notable example, Steinitz and Zukertort. After the Criterion Great Tournament of 1883 opinions differed much as to which of these was the stronger player, but after the match at 15 moves an hour, in the United States, won by Steinitz with a score of 10 to 4, the palm has been generally awarded to Steinitz, and without any qualification whatever the term of champion of the chess world has been universally accorded to him and still continues to be so, notwithstanding the superior claims of Dr. Tarrasch based upon victory in three successive International Chess Tournaments, Breslan 1889, Manchester 1890, and Dresden in 1892, in the two first named not losing a single game, and in the last, one only, feats never accomplished by Steinitz.