The connecting links of evidence
which Sir F. Madden and Professor Forbes have illustrated in
Athelstan's and Edgar's reigns, would have been greatly
strengthened and confirmed, if they had thought of Alcuin's
residence and influence at a court where chess was not only
played, but talked about and corresponded upon. Charlemagne's
presents included the wonderful chess men which he valued so
highly, and with which we are tolerably familiar through the
reports of Dr. Hyde, F. Douce, Sir F. Madden, and H. Twiss, and
the engravings in Willeman's work, and by Winckelman and Art
Journal. These chessmen (still preserved) were perhaps often seen
by Alcuin and were possibly also shewn by Charlemagne to the
youthful Egbert when in refuge at his court, and on the whole it
seems unreasonable to assume that chess was unknown in England
after Alcuin's last sojourn, and during Egbert's reign.
It may be also that on further consideration of the Roman edict
and references to their games, and the accounts relating to the
fourth century B.C., many will be indisposed to accept the dictum
that Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle meant nothing more than a game
of pebbles, when they referred to chess and propounded their
theories as to its invention.
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