“Some men from long practice, have arrived at such a degree of perfection in this art, as to have played blindfold at four or five boards at one and the same time, and never to have committed a mistake in any of the games.”  He further tells us that—­“some have been known to have recited poetry, or told amusing stories, or conversed with the company present, during the progress of the contest.”  In another sentence he says—­“I have seen it written in a book, that one man played blindfold at ten boards simultaneously, and gained all the games; he even corrected many errors committed by his opponents and friends, in describing the moves.

It was a saying in the East, “He plays at chess like Al Suli.”  So that many believed him to be the inventor of this game, but erroneously.

The Arabians say that a certain great man showed one of his friends his garden, full of fine flowers, and said to him, “Did you ever see a finer sight than this?  Yes,” he replied, “Al Suli’s game at chess is more beautiful than this garden and everything that is in it.”

Al Suli died A. D. 946.

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The writer is not enamoured of blindfold play, preferring not to attempt to do that without his eyes, which he can do better with.  “Blindfold Play” the term used nowadays, or “playing behind your back,” as one of the old Arabian manuscripts has it, seems not the most happy expression for the art, playing “Sans Voir” or without sight of chess board or pieces clearly expresses it.  Good players, actually blind, may be mentioned, the writer has played with such, in a simultaneous exhibition of chess play at Sheffield, a game against two blind boys from the Asylum, proved one of the best contested and most interesting in the series, and these bright but afflicted lads evidently, with their kind attendant, derived the greatest pleasure from the meeting.

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THE GAME OF CHESS

Elaborate and learned works have appeared treating on the supposed origin of chess.  Oriental manuscripts, Eastern fables, and the early poets have been quoted to prove its antiquity, and it would not be easy to name any subject upon which so much valuable labour and antiquarian research has been bestowed, with so little harmonious or agreed result as to opinions concerning the first source of this wonderful game.

That chess reached Persia from India in the first half of the Sixth century, during the reign of Chosroes, is well attested, and concurred in by all historians from the Arabian and Persian writers, the beautiful and accomplished Greek Princess Anna Comnena, and the Asiatic Society’s famous manuscript to Dr. Hyde and Sir William Jones, and Sir Frederick Madden and Professor Duncan Forbes, China, also, admits the receipt of chess from India in the year 537, and got it about the same time as Persia.