It appears to have been a fashionable pastime among grown persons in the reign of James I. In the Two Maids of Moreclacke, a comedy printed in 1609, it is said, "To play at shuttle-cock methinkes is the game now." And among the anecdotes related of prince Henry, son to James 1., is the following: "His highness playing at shittle-cocke, with one farr taller than himself, and hittyng him by chance with the shittle-cocke upon the forehead, 'This is,' quoth he, 'the encounter of David with Goliath.'" [913]
CHAPTER II
I. Sedentary Games.—II. Dice-playing;—Its Prevalency and bad Effects.—III Ancient Dice-box;—Anecdote relating to false Dice.—IV. Chess;—Its Antiquity.—V. The Morals of Chess.—VI. Early Chess-play in France and England.—VII. The Chess-board.—VIII. The Pieces, and their Form.—IX. The various Games of Chess.—X. Ancient Games similar to Chess.—XI. The Philosopher's Game.—XII. Draughts, French and Polish.—XIII. Merelles, or Nine Mens' Morris.—XIV. Fox and Geese.—XV. The Solitary Game.—XVI. Backgammon, anciently called Tables;—The different Manners of playing at Tables.—XVII Backgammon, its former and present estimation.—XVIII. Domino.—XIX. Cards, when invented.—XX. Card-playing much practised.—XXI. Forbidden.—XXII. Censured by Poets.—XXIII. A specimen of ancient Cards.—XXIV. Games formerly played with Cards.—XXV. The Game of Goose—and of the Snake.—XXVI. Cross and Pile.
I.—SEDENTARY GAMES.
This chapter is appropriated to sedentary games, and in treating upon most of them I am under the necessity of confining myself to very narrow limits. To attempt a minute investigation of their properties, to explain the different manners in which they have been played, or to produce all the regulations by which they have been governed, is absolutely incompatible with my present design. Instead, therefore, of following the various writers upon these subjects, whose opinions are rarely in unison, through the multiplicity of their arguments, I shall content myself by selecting such of them as appear to be most cogent, and be exceedingly brief in my own observations.
II.—DICE PLAY—ITS PREVALENCY AND BAD EFFECTS.
There is not, I believe, any species of amusement more ancient than dice-playing; none has been more universally prevalent, and, generally speaking, none is more pernicious in its consequences. It is the earliest, or at least one of the most early pastimes in use among the Grecians. Dice are said to have been invented, together with chess, by Palamedes, the son of Nauplius, king of Eubœa. [914] Others, agreeing to the time of the invention of dice, attribute it to a Greek soldier named Alea, and therefore say that the game was so denominated. [915] But Herodotus [916] attributes both dice and chess to the Lydians, a people of Asia; in which part of the world, it is most probable, they originated at some very remote but uncertain period. We have already seen that the ancient Germans, even in their state of barbarism, indulged the propensity for gambling with the dice to a degree of madness, not only staking all they were worth, but even their liberty, upon the chance of a throw, and submitted to slavery if fortune declared against them. [917] The Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans their descendants, were all of them greatly addicted to the same infatuating pastime. One would not, at first sight, imagine that the dice could afford any great variety of amusement, especially if they be abstractedly considered; and yet John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, speaks of ten different games of dice then in use; but as he has only given us the names, their properties cannot be investigated. He calls it, [918] "The damnable art of dice-playing." Another author, contemporary with him, says, "The clergymen and bishops are fond of dice-playing." [919]