These gambits may be classed under what are, in common phrase, termed
"open" or "close" games; an open game being where the pieces are brought
out into more immediate engagement,--a close game where the pawns
interlock, and the pieces can less easily issue to the attack. An instance
of the former may be found in the Allgaier,--of the latter in Philidor's
Defence. These two kinds of games are found in chess-play because they are
found in human temperament; as there are brilliant and daring Napoleons,
and cautious, pertinacious Washingtons in war, so are there in chess
Philidor and La Bourdonnais, Staunton and Morphy. In examining
Mr. Staunton's play, for example, one is struck with the French tact of
M. St. Amant's remark, made many years ago: "M. Staunton has the solidity
of iron, but neither the purity of gold nor the brilliancy of the diamond."
However much Mr. Staunton's ignoble evasion of the match with Morphy--after
bringing him, by his letter, all the way from New Orleans to London, a
voyage which would scarcely have been taken otherwise--may have stained his
reputation as a courageous and honorable chess-player, we cannot be blind
to the fact, that he is the strongest master of the game in Europe. With a
fine mathematical head, (more at home, however, in the Calculus than in
Algebra,)--with an immense power of reserve and masterly repose,--able to
hold an almost incredible number of threads without getting them
entangled,--he has all the qualities which bear that glorious flower,
success. But he is never brilliant; he has outwearied many a deeper man by
his indefatigable evenness and persistance; he is Giant Despair to the
brilliant young men. Mr. Morphy is just the _otherest_ from Staunton. Like
him only in sustained and quiet power, he brings to the board that demon of
his, Memory,--such a memory, too, as no other chess-player has ever
possessed: add to this wonderful analytic power and you have the secret of
this Chess-King. Patient practice, ambition, and leisure have done the
rest. He has thus the _lustre du diamant_, which St. Amant missed in
Mr. Staunton; and we know that the brilliant diamond is hard enough also to
make its mark upon the "solid iron."
Amongst other great living players who incline to the "close game," we may
mention Mr. Harrwitz, whose match with Morphy furnished not one brilliant
game; also Messrs. Slous, Horwitz, Bledow, Szen, and others. But the
tendency has been, ever since the celebrated and magnificent matches of the
two greatest chess geniuses which England and France have ever known,
McDonnel and De la Bourdonnais, to cultivate the bolder and more exciting
open gambits. And under the lead of Paul Morphy this tendency is likely to
be inaugurated as the rule of modern chess. Professor Anderssen, Mayet,
Lange, and Von der Lasa, in Germany,--Dubois and Centurini, at
Rome,--St. Amant, Laroche, and Lécrivain, of Paris,--Löwenthal, 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, Bishop are
Passion, Love, Hope; and above all, the sacred Queen of each man, his
specialty, his strength, by which he must win the day, if he win at
all. Here is the Idea with reference to which each man is planned; it
preexisted in the universe, and was born when he was born; it is King on
the board,--that lost, life's game is lost. By his side stands the special
Strength into whose keeping it is given, making, in Goethe's words, "every
man strong enough to enforce his conviction,"--his _conviction_, mark!
Pawns and pieces form themselves about that Queen; they are all to perish,
to perish one by one,--even the specialty,--that the King may triumph. Over
our largest, sublimest individualities the eternal tide flows on, and the
grandest personal strides are merged in the general success. The old author
dreamed that the heroes of the Trojan War were changed by Zeus into the
warriors of the mimic strife in order that such renowned exploits should be
perpetuated among men forever: rather must we reverse the dream, and
apotheosize the powers of the board, that they may appear in the sieges,
heroisms, and victories of life.
* * * * *