It is akin to music, to love, to
joy, in that it sets aside alike social caste and sectarian differences:
kings and peasants, warriors and priests, lords and ladies, mingle over the
board as they are represented upon it. "The earliest chess-men on the banks
of the Sacred River were worshippers of Buddha; a player whose name and
fame have grown into an Arabic proverb was a Moslem; a Hebrew Rabbi of
renown, in and out of the Synagogues, wrote one of the finest chess poems
extant; a Catholic priest of Spain has bestowed his name upon two openings;
one of the foremost problem--composers of the age is a Protestant clergyman
of England; and the Greek Church numbers several cultivators of chess
unrivaled in our day." It has received eulogies from Burton,--from
Castiglione,--from Chatham, who, in reply to a compliment on a grand stroke
of invention and successful oratory, said, "My success arose only from
having been checkmated by discovery, the day before, at chess,"--from
Comenius, the grammarian,--from Conde, Cowley, Denham, Justus van Effen,
Sir Thomas Elyot, Guillim, Helvetia, Huarte, Sir William Jones, Leibnitz,
Lydgate, Olaus Magnus, Pasquier, Sir Walter Raleigh, Rousseau, Voltaire,
Samuel Warren, Warton, Franklin, Buckle, and many others of ability in
every department of letters, philosophy, and art. We know of but one man of
genius or learning--who has repudiated it,--Montaigne. "Or if he
[Alexander] played at chess," says Montaigne, "what string of his soul was
not touched by this idle and childish game? I hate and avoid it because it
is not play enough,--that it is too grave and serious a diversion; and I am
ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon that as would serve to
much better uses.
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