STUDIES OF CHESS; CONTAINING CAISSA, A POEM,

BY SIR WILLIAM JONES;

A Systematic Introduction to the Game;

AND

THE WHOLE

ANALYSIS OF CHESS,

COMPOSED BY Mr. A. D. PHILIDOR:

WITH

Original Critical Remarks.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

“Ludimus effigiem belli.”

VOL. I.

London: Printed for SAMUEL BAGSTER, No. 81, Strand. 1803.

Printed by W. Smith, King Street, Seven Dials.

Contents of the First Volume.

PAGE

Caïssa, a Poem, by Sir William Jones 1

Introduction to Chess 21

Elementary Institutes 23

Description of the Pieces 24

General Maxims 35

Progressive Examples—First Essay 54

———— Second Essay 68

Scale of Powers 82

Second Essay resumed 85

The Scholar’s-Mate 98

Game of Combinations 112

Analysis of Chess 125

Philidor’s own Games—First Party 127

—— —— —— Second Party 143

—— —— —— Third Party 157

—— —— —— Fourth Party 175

Philidor’s First Gambit 190

—— Second Gambit 212

—— Third Gambit 235

The Cunningham Gambit 251

PREFACE.

Chess is distinguished from other games, by having long had the suffrages of contemplative men in its favor; the countenance of illustrious characters of the most opposite professions. Generals have modelled their operations on its little portable field; philosophers have traced consequences through its range of combinations; divines have exercised contemplation in its vicissitudes. Teeming, through its varied progress and turns, with excitements to thinking, it is, in its essential tendency, a gymnasium of the mind.

It is unnecessary to insist on the right of this game to be classed alone, as the distinction with which it is viewed is a general sentiment. The Editor is equally unoriginal on another subject, his own merely coinciding with public impressions. This is the excellence of the work of Philidor, as a deposit of science and experience. It is a publication intrinsically pervaded by invention and skill. The substance alone is, however, entitled to unqualified eulogy: it must be admitted, that Philidor presented it in a dress capable of improvement. This partly arose from an implicit adoption of terms which he found in the game; and partly from the difficulty of giving his ideas an expression, as clear as their conception, when conveying them in a foreign language.

Hence the Editor found it necessary to recompose some, and to retouch almost all the notes of the ANALYSIS. For any degree of obscurity which may remain, or have acceded, he is thus become chargeable. He hopes he has not unsuccessfully endeavoured at clearness; and he felt it not a duty, incumbent on his province, to aim at elegance.

In the notation of the moves, the following are the principal alterations upon which he has ventured. When the first lessons at Chess were given to Philidor, a habit of speaking of a piece, as making two moves at once, infected his masters; and he imbibed it. “The king’s pawn two moves.” It would be as proper to direct a bishop to make at once seven moves. For phrases which have been repeated till they cease to be strange, in marking the distance to be passed by a pawn, the Editor uses the phrases, “one square”—“two squares.”

When two or three captures succeed without intermission, he found the word retake employed. But a piece once lost, is recovered by a different process than capture; and though a player may make reprisals or retaliate, he cannot, by any latitude of accommodation, be said to retake. As this expression must perplex a novitiate, by implying a resemblance in Chess and arms, which, in this respect, does not exist, and cannot be agreeable to the proficient who considers its incorrectness, it is rescinded, in the present copy, for the simple word take.

The term double check was indiscriminately applied, in the ANALYSIS, to a situation which it precisely marks, and to another situation. The king in check with two pieces, and one piece taking such an attitude to give check, that a part of the assailing power diverges on a second piece, are, surely, different relations of the mimic forces. The Editor has introduced the new term divergent check, for the latter situation

The high reputation of Philidor, has not deterred the Editor from critically examining each successive example in the Analysis, whether invented or adopted; and if an inquisitorial review has detected circumstances, in the collision of the pieces, which appear to flow from oversight, it is a just encomium on that accomplished player, that they are very few. Aware of the delicacy with which movements dependent on complicate play should be touched, the Editor has uniformly retained the original course assigned by Philidor; with regard to any change of course, merely proposing it in a stricture, or pursuing it in the detached form of a variation.

The ANALYSIS, as left by our professor, was not accompanied by a compendium of the first elements of Chess, though a standard display of the constitution of the game must be more or less necessary to every person who consults a Chess Book. The INTRODUCTION now prefixed, proceeds on the supposition, that the reader is an inquirer on every point connected with the board and pieces; any other idea excludes method, and involves rejections that may be attributed to caprice. The divisions will enable each reader to pass, in masses, those particulars of which he does not want to be informed.

The rising series of games form an ascent to PHILIDOR. The inceptive party is interspersed with moves which are declared to be wrong: these may have a parallel use with the examples of false construction inserted in grammars. The latter have long been pronounced to furnish an improving exercise.

The scale of powers is a branch of Theory, new in its design. An engaging part of the work remains to be noticed.

The Poem of Sir William Jones is introduced as a relief from a serious application to the game, and an elegant embellishment. Among its numerous beauties, the description of the operations of the knight, may be pointed out as eminently happy. The reader of taste, far from disapproving the assignation of twenty pages to this admired effusion, will regret that the recreative flight is so soon suspended; and the amateur and polite scholar will hail, with pleasure, such a classical offering to Chess.

CAÏSSA .

OR

THE GAME AT CHESS.

A POEM.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1763.

BY SIR WILLIAM JONES.

The first idea of the following piece was taken from a Latin poem of Vida, entitled Scacchia Ludus, which was translated into Italian by Marino, and inserted in the fifteenth Canto of his Adonis: the author thought it fair to make an acknowledgment in the notes for the passages which he borrowed from those two poets; but he must also do them the justice to declare, that most of the descriptions, and the whole story of Caïssa, which is written in imitation of Ovid, are his own, and their faults must be imputed to him only. The characters in the poem are no less imaginary than those in the episode; in which the invention of Chess is poetically ascribed to Mars, though it is certain that the game was originally brought from India.