physical the inventor of the game, and the occasion of its invention. The 6th and 7th treat of the morals and amenities of Chess, together with a few judicious advices to the players; the 8th, on drawn games; the 9th, on the openings; the 10th, on the curiosities of Chess, such as the well-known feat of the Knight covering the sixtyfour squares in so many moves, &c. ; the 11th is valuable, as it gives an excellent selection of end-games on diagrams, together with their solutions. The 12th contains directions for playing without seeing the board. This work is decidedly the neatest and plainest compendium of the theory and practice of the medieval game that I have yet seen or heard of.

In the third place, I have had recourse to two copies, in the British Museum, of a Persian work in Manuscript, entitled "Nafa,isu-l-Funūn" or the "Treasures of the Sciences." It is a compendious Encyclopædia, and consequently the article devoted to Chess and other games, consisting of three chapters, is necessarily more concise than either of the two treatises above mentioned. The second Chapter gives a brief history of the invention of the game in India, and enumerates five different varieties of Chess, or rather five distinct forms of the chessboard, for the principle is the same in all. The concluding chapter contains some fifteen problems or positions which offer no particular novelty, being, as we might expect, all selected from previous works on the subject. To these are added some amusing and sensible remarks respecting the morals and social observances or amenities of the

"Royal game." The following is especially worthy of remark-" In India they test a person's fitness for the duties of Wazir or Minister by making two people play chess in his presence. If he looks on and speaks not a word, they put confidence in him; but if he indulges in

remarks on the moves, and gives advice to the players, he is considered to be deficient in discretion, and unfit for the office."1

My fourth authority is a Persian manuscript (No. 260,) belonging to the library of the Royal Asiatic Society." It consists of 64 leaves, quarto size, finely written, 15 lines to the page. One half consists of diagrams of very interesting positions, without any solutions, and the other half of descriptive writing. The work is both imperfect and misarranged, there being scarcely one leaf placed where it ought to be. On careful perusal, however, I have found that twenty-eight of the leaves, if properly arranged, would form a complete sequence without any break, and the other four are uncertain. The following is the order of the subjects as intended by the author: first, a detached leaf forming part of the preface, the purport of which is to convince the reader of the author's prodigious merits, especially in Chess. Then follow 12 folios on the beneficial effects of Chess: this subject is complete, with the exception of a few lines at the commencement.

1 It is curious to observe, that the early Scandinavians applied the game of Chess to a similar purpose in order to discover a man's temper and moral disposition. From an English abridgement of the "History of the Goths, Swedes and Vandals," by Olaus Magnus we read that "It was a custom amongst the most illustrious Goths and Swedes, when they would honestly marry their daughters that in order to prove the disposition of their suitors that came to them and to know their passions especially, they used to play with such suitors at Chess and Tables. For at these games their anger, love, peevishnesse, covetousnesse, dulnesse, idlenesse, and many more mad pranks, passions, and motions of their minds, and the forces and properties of their fortunes are used to be seen; as whether the wooer be rudely disposed, that he will indiscreetly rejoyce, and suddenly triumph when he wins; or whether when he is wronged, he can patiently endure it, and wisely put it off."

2 This manuscript is the ground work of Mr. Bland's Essay on Persian Chess in which brochure a very detailed but unsatisfactory description of it will be found. Mr. Bland seems to have failed in arranging the detached leaves of the work, so as to form a sequence. His essay, of which some notice will be taken hereafter, is more to be commended on the score of its ingenuity and hardiesse than for the soundness of its logic.-Vide Appendix, A.

Then we have 7 folios including a very neat diagram, giving a complete account of the "Perfect Chess," or "Timur's Great Game.' This Chapter is fortunately entire, and it is, probably, the only account we have of that curious innovation, the substance of which we shall give in our eleventh chapter. Then we have 7 folios on the invention of the common game in India. `This chapter, also is complete, and the substance of it has been already given in our Chapter VII. Two chapters on the relative value of the pieces, and on the gradations of odds, are also complete as to the subjects, though they do not apparently contain all that the author wrote thereon. Lastly, a folio and a-half on drawn games, &c., incomplete, and partly illegible.

The diagrams are 64 in number, and consist chiefly of end-games won or drawn by force. The first two diagrams are illegible, but fortunately they merely contained openings, of which we have abundance in the Arabic manuscript of the British Museum. Of the end-games the most valuable are eighteen positions by Khwaja 'Ali Shatranji, most of which occurred in actual play. All the rest are said to have been invented by various eminent players (whose names are given), from the Caliph AlM'utasim Billāh downwards. It is a curious fact, however, that among the number there is not one of the author's own invention, although in his preface he boasts of having made wonderful improvements in every department of Chess, and of having discovered and corrected several errors in problems composed by eminent masters before his own time. In truth, the author must have been a singular character, and, had we received his book entire, it would undoubtedly have proved an extraordinary production. In justice to this writer, I shall here give a literal translation of what remains of his own preface,

which, it must be confessed, is a very promising one. It may also lead to the discovery, in India or Persia, of a complete copy of the work.

The author seems to have (in the missing portion) been recommending Chess as an excellent medicine both for the body and mind; and then he proceeds to tell the reader what he has himself done in the royal game, and also what he is going to write thereon. There is a quaint vein of godliness that runs throughout the fragment, such as to lay claim to our conviction of the good man's sincerity, although his style does occasionally approach that of the Baron Munchausen :

PREFACE.

"*** And many a one has experienced a relief from sorrow and affliction in consequence of this magic recreation; and this same fact has been asserted by the celebrated physician Muhammad Zakaria Rāzī,"1 in his book, entitled 'The Essences of Things;' and such is likewise the opinion of the physician 'Ali Bin Firdaus, as I shall notice more fully towards the end of the present work, for the composing of which I am in the hope of receiving my reward from God, who is Most High and Most Glorious.

"I have passed my life since the age of fifteen years among all the masters of Chess living in my time; and since that period till now, when I have arrived at middle

1 Răzi, called by our medieval writers Rhasis, was a celebrated physician of Bagdad where he died about A.D. 922. Burton in his very amusing book entitled "The Anatomy of Melancholy" thus speaks of him, and of Chess together. "Chess-play is a good and witty exercise of the mind, for some kind of men, and fit for such melancholics, (Rhasis holds,) as are idle, and have extravagant and impertinent thoughts, or troubled with cares; nothing better to distract their mind, and alter their meditations."

age, I have travelled through 'Irak-'Arab, and 'Irak-'Ajam, and Khurāsān, and the regions of Mawara-al-Nahr (Transoxania,) and I have there met with many a master in this art, and I have played with all of them, and, through the favour of Him who is Adorable and Most High, I have come off victorious.

"Likewise, in playing without seeing the board, I have overcome most opponents, nor had they the power to cope with me. I, the humble sinner now addressing you, have frequently played with one opponent over the board, and at the same time I have carried on four different games with as many adversaries without seeing the board, whilst I conversed freely with my friends all along, and through the Divine favour I conquered them all. Also in the Great Chess I have invented sundry positions, as well as several openings, which no one else ever imagined or contrived.

"There are a great number of ingenious positions that have occurred to me in the course of my experience, in the common game, as practised at the present day; and many positions given as won by the older masters I have either proved to be capable of defence, or I have made the necessary corrections in them, so that they now stand for what they were originally intended to be. I have also improved and rendered more complete all the rare and cunning stratagems hitherto recorded or invented by the first masters of Chess. In short, I have here laid before the reader all that I have myself discovered from experience, as well as whatever I found to be rare and excellent in the labours of my predecessors.

"In the first place, I will make clear to you that the 'Perfect Chess' is the original; I will then inform you who invented it, and where it was invented, and on what occasion the invention took place. I will also detail to you

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