" 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.
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