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 Lecrivain, of Paris,--Loewenthal, 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.
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