There is scarcely any writer who has gone through so many
editions and translations as Marcus Hieronymus Vida, Bishop of
Alba. The Scacchia Ludus was published at Rome in 1527, and
since then no fewer than twenty-four editions have been published
in the original Latin, the last at London in 1813. Of translation
there have been eleven in Italian, four in French, and eight in
English, including the one ascribed to Goldsmith, which appears
in an edition of that poet's works published by Murray in 1856.
The only German translation hitherto noticed in this country is
that printed at the end of Kochs Codex (1814) but we learn from
an editorial note that the version now given in the Schachtzeitung
is by Herr Pastor Jesse, and that it was published at Hanover in
1830. It was from Vida that Sir William Jones obtained the idea
of his poem Caissa, which Mr. Peter Pratt described in his Studies
of chess as an "elegant embellishment" an "admired effusion"
and a classical offering to chess. In the Introduction is found:
To THE READER, GREETING. Strange perchance may it seem
to some (courteous Reader) that anie man should employ his time
and bestow his labour in setting out such bookes, whereby men
may learn to play, when indeede most men are given rather to
play, than to studie and travell, which were true, if it were for
the teaching of games unlawfull, as dice play, or cogging, or
falsehoods in card play, or such like, but forasmuch as this game
or kingly pastime is not only devoid of craft, fraud, and guile,
swearing, staring, impatience, fretting and falling out, but also
breedeth in the players a certaine studie, wit, pollicie, forecaste,
and memorie not only in the play thereof, but also in action of
publick government, both in peace and warre, wherein both
Counsellors at home and Captaines abroade may picke out of these
wodden pieces some prettie pollicie both how to govern their
subjects in peace, how to leade or conduct lively men in the field
in warre: for this game hath the similitude of a ranged battell,
as by placing the men and setting them forth on the march
may very easily appeare. The King standeth in the field in
middle of his army, and hath his Queene next unto him and his
Nobilitie about him, with his soldiers to defend him in the
forefront of the battell.
Sith therefore this game is pleasant to all, profitable to most,
hurtful to none. I pray thee (gentle reader) take this my labour
in good part, and thou shalt animate me hereafter to the setting
forth of deeper matters. Farewell. LUDUS SCACCHI.
Peter Pratt of Lincoln's Inn, author of the "Theory of Chess,"
(1799) a work referred to by Professor Allen, the biographer of
Philidor as "the most divertingly absurd of all chess books."
Some idea of the plan and style of the work may be obtained
from the following extract from the author's preface: "The game
of chess, though generally considered as an emblem of war (the
blood stained specie of it) seemed to him (the author) more to
resemble those less ensanguined political hostilities which take
place between great men in free countries, an idea which was at
once suggested and confirmed by observing that when one
combatant is said to have conquered another, instead of doing
anything like killing or wounding him, he only casts him from his
place and gets into it himself." Fortified in this conceit the
ingenious author converts the Pawns into Members of the House
of Commons, the Rooks into Peers, while the Queen is transformed
into a Minister, and the whole effect of this curious nomenclature
upon the notation of the games is ludicrous in the extreme.
An American view was presented in the following words, it
would probably have also have disturbed the equanimity of
Forbes like that of Pope's did (page 20).
The date to which I have referred the origin of chess will
probably astonish those persons who have only regarded it as the
amusement of idle hours, and have never troubled themselves to
peruse those able essays in which the best of antiquaries and
investigators have dissipated the cloudy obscurity which once
enshrouded this subject. Those who do not know the inherent
life which it possesses will wonder at its long and enduring career.
They will be startled to learn that chess was played before
Columbus discovered America, before Charlemagne revived the
Western Empire, before Romulus founded Rome, before Achilles
went up to the Siege of Troy, and that it is still played as widely
and as zealously as ever now that those events have been for
ages a part of history. It will be difficult for them to comprehend
how, amid the wreck of nations, the destruction of races, the
revolutions of time, and the lapse of centuries, this mere game
has survived, when so many things of far greater importance
have either passed away from the memories of men, or still exist
only in the dusty pages of the chroniclers. It owes, of course,
much of its tenacity of existence to the amazing inexhaustibility
of its nature. Some chess writers have loved to dwell upon the
unending fertility of its powers of combinations. They have
calculated by arithmetical rules the myriads of positions of which
the pieces and pawns are susceptible. They have told us that a
life time of many ages would hardly suffice even to count them.
We know, too, that while the composers of the orient and the
occident have displayed during long centuries an admirable
subtility and ingenuity in the fabrications of problems, yet the
chess stratagems of the last quarter of a century have never been
excelled in intricacy and beauty. We have witnessed, in our day
contests brilliant with skilful maneuvers unknown to the sagacious
and dexterous chess artists of the Eighteenth century.
Within the last thirty years we have seen the invention of an
opening as correct in theory, and as elegant in practice as any
upon the board, and of which our fathers were utterly ignorant.
The world is not likely to tire of an amusement which never
repeats itself, of a game which presents today, features as novel,
and charms as fresh as those with which it delighted, in the
morning of history, the dwellers on the banks of the Ganges and
Indus.
An Indian philosopher thus described it:
It is a representative contest, a bloodless combat, an image, not
only of actual military operations, but of that greater warfare
which every son of the earth, from the cradle to the grave, is
continually waging, the battle of life. Its virtues are as
innumerable as the sands of African Sahara. It heals the mind in
sickness, and exercises it in health. It is rest to the overworked
intellect, and relaxation to the fatigued body. It lessens the
grief of the mourner, and heightens the enjoyment of the happy.
It teaches the angry man to restrain his passions, the light-minded
to become grave, the cautious to be bold, and the venturesome to be
prudent. It affords a keen delight to youth, a sober pleasure to
manhood, and a perpetual solace to old age. It induces the poor to
forget their poverty, and the rich to be careless of their wealth.
It admonishes Kings to love and respect their people, and instructs
subjects to obey and reverence their rulers. It shows how the
humblest citizens, by the practise of virtue and the efforts of
labour, may rise to the loftiest stations, and how the haughtiest
lords, by the love of vice and the commission of errors, may fall
from their elevated estate. It is an amusement and an art, a sport
and a science. The erudite and untaught, the high and the low,
the powerful and the weak, acknowledge its charms and confirm
its enticements. We learn to like it in the years of our youth,
but as increased familiarity has developed its beauties, and
unfolded its lessons, our enthusiasm has grown stronger, and our
fondness more confirmed.
NOTE. The earliest example of praise and censure of chess strikes
us as very curious and sufficiently interesting to be presented
as illustrating two varieties of Arabian style, and as exhibiting
two sides of the question. It is from one of the early Arabian
manuscripts called the Yawakit ul Mawakit in the collection Baron
Hammer Purgstall at Vienna.
By Ibn Ul Mutazz.
CENSURE OF CHESS.
The chess player is ever absorbed in his chess and full of care,
swearing false oaths and making many vain excuses, one who careth
only for himself and angereth his Maker. 'Tis the game of him who
keepeth the fast only when he is hungry, of the official who is in
disgrace, of the drunkard till he recovereth from his drunkenness,
and in the Yatimat ul Dehr it is said, Abul Casim al Kesrawi hated
chess, and constantly abused it, saying, you never see a chess
player rich who is not a sordid miser, nor hear a squabbling that
is not on a question of the chess board.