pieces remain on the board_. Consequently a player may have two, or a
greater plurality of queens. How, enquires the player recently entered
on the study of the game, is each additional queen to be represented
and distinguished? By placing two pawns on one square, and pushing
them about in company; a solecism in theory, a barbarism in practice.
Against it, PHILIDOR, in the first edition of his work, violently
inveighs. His reasons and his poignant ridicule are recorded; but he
has not favoured us with the arguments by which he was afterwards
induced to give it countenance. Perhaps he was overborne by a majority,
prepossessed in favour of a practice, to which, from their first
acquaintance with the game, they had been accustomed.
The EDITOR begs leave to suggest, that by limiting the promotion of
the pawn to the highest office or, power, _vacant_, an incongruity
revolting against method, may be avoided; and a moderate share of
skill will still enable the player, to derive the utmost preponderance
from a pawn on the eve of promotion. It is only necessary previously
to offer an exchange of queens, which can seldom be refused, without
surrendering the advantage of position: not to mention that the
conversion of a pawn merely into a rook, would prove, in the hands of
an able player, an effective acquisition.
We now enter on the consideration of Section X. It must be owned that
PHILIDOR was always an advocate for the principle which pervades
it, inculcating it before it was engrafted in the English code. It
professes to establish, that an unmoved pawn may be disqualified
from advancing two squares, by the circumstance of an adverse pawn
having penetrated to the fourth square of an adjoining file. There
is a refinement in this decision, which, while the mistake on which
it rests lay undetected, recommended it to the ingenious. Expose the
mistake which probably gave rise to it, and the rule is left without
foundation. The phrase "two _steps_ the first _move_," or "two _moves_
the first _step_," an occasional substitution, was current through
chess books, and with players. Hence a habit was implicitly contracted,
of contemplating a pawn exercising this power, as making TWO _moves of_
ONE _square each_, not ONE _continued integral move of_ TWO _squares_.
The EDITOR observes, that if the former idea be right, every one must
admit the rule to be right; for who could make a journey of 20 miles,
that is precluded from going the first 10. But if the latter idea be
the correct one, if the pawn, at its first move, have really the power
of going two squares at one effort, it is as irregular to prohibit the
exercise of that power, because the pawn, were it to halt on its way,
would be taken; as it would be to prohibit the bishop, the rook, or
the queen, the full exercise of their greater powers, whenever there
is a square in the line of their passage, at which they could not rest
without being taken. Ought any of the latter pieces to be precluded
from passing such a square? The absurdity of the phraseology which
supports the rule is conspicuous, when extended to the queen; it would
be grotesque to say, that she makes seven moves. For these reasons, in
describing the properties of the pawn, in the _INTRODUCTION TO CHESS_,
in the first volume, no notice is taken of this disqualification.