[179] Lord Chesterfield is reported to have said to Anstis on one occasion, when the latter was talking to him about heraldry, "You silly man, you do not understand your own foolish business."
[180] Menestrier, Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive, tom. ii, p. 180.
[181] By card-makers the coat cards—King, Queen, and Knave—are technically termed têtes, and the others pips.
[182] "Jeu d'Armoires, où tous les termes du Blazon sont expliqués et rangés par ordre. Dedié à Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne. Se vend à Paris, chez Vallet, dessinateur et graveur du Roy." The privilege to the author, Sieur Gauthier, is dated 15th December, 1686.
[183] "The PUFF COLLUSIVE is the newest of any; for it acts in the disguise of determined hostility. It is much used by bold booksellers and enterprising poets."—The Critic, act i. The "puff collusive" was not an invention of Sheridan's time, but merely the revival of an old trick.
[184] The advertisement of those cards is preserved amongst Bagford's collections, Harleian MSS. No. 5947.
"Principally games of geography, history, and metamorphoses, engraved by Della Bella, from plans furnished by the poet Desmarets, to facilitate the studies of Louis XIV when a child. The idea is said to have been suggested by Cardinal Mazarine."—A pack of military cards, with instructions for playing the game, devised by the Sieur Des Martins, and dedicated to "Son Altesse le Duc de Maine, Colonel-général des Suisses," appeared in 1676. His Highness the Colonel-general, who was the son of Louis XIV and Madame Montespan, was then six years old.
By the favour of F. R. Atkinson, Esq., of Manchester, an assiduous and intelligent collector of curious books, I have had an opportunity of examining two sets of French Historic Cards, without date, but probably published about 1690. One of them is entitled "Cartes des Rois de France. A Paris, chez F. Le Comte, rue St. Jaques, au Chifre du Roi." The title of the other is, "Jeu des Reynes Renommées. A Paris, chez Henri le Gras, Librairie, au 3e pilier de la grande Salle du Palais." Both sets appeared to have been designed exclusively for the purpose of instruction, and not for play.
[186] About the same period Moxon, "glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," published a pack of Astronomical Cards. In the life of Beau Hewitt, in Lucas's Memoirs of the Lives, Intrigues, and Comical Adventures of the most Famous Gamesters and Celebrated Sharpers in the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III, and Queen Anne, 1714, the Beau is represented as having "most assiduously studied the use of the geometrical playing-cards, set forth by Monsieur Des Cartes, the famous French philosopher and mathematician; but that finding the demonstrations of that great man to be founded on no certainty, he resolved to try his luck at dice." It is said that Pascal's attention was first directed to the calculation of chances in consequence of some questions proposed to him by the Chevalier de Meré, a great gamester.