CHESS NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1583, 25 March 1882, Page 24

CHESS NOTES.

The late Mr Buckle, after a day's work upon the "History of Civilisation," is Baid to have thought nothing 1 of spending half the night over the chessboard, and probably never mated his adversary with more ease and rapidity than after writing* a slashing chapter upon the " Ancien Regime." But we may be permitted to doubt whether this superfluity of mental force is to be found in all or any of Mr Buckle's contemporaries or successors. Such was not the opinion of the late Mr Staunton, who often regretted that his early passion for the game of chess prevented him in later life from doing fiee justice to his powers in other paths. Chess requires from those who seek excellence so exclusive a cultus that no other pursuit can be prosecuted at the same time with even equal interest. Thii explains why no man of great and commanding genius has ever been at the same time a great player. Napoleon was pwBionately fond of the game, but he was never even a second-clasß player. A senior wrangler might probably have to receive large odds from the winner of the "wooden spoon," even though both bad learned the game at the same time, for success in chess depenes upon the amount of the qualities mental or moral, which can be concentrated on the chess-board. The game munt be played as if the stake were life and death. The exact m«diuin between excessive caution and audacity which bo few generals have practised, must be invariably pursued in the management of so many bits of wood or ivory. Now, it is no paradox to assert that a man of vast genius -a Bacon, or a Descartes, or a Milton— could not throw his soul into such a task. Mr Gladstone could not construct a chess plan with the care and minuteness with which he would construct a budget. Gen. Ignatieff could not devote the same ingenuity in concealing a deadly onslaught upon the adversary's chess king, that he might have displayed an hour before in dealing with a fellow embassador. We must pass down the intellectual scale, therefore, until precisely that point is reached where victory in a game of skill can attract and enlist all than the man possesses of invention, knowledge, patience, audacity, and resource. Add to these a fair physical constitution, to endure a 12 houre' sitting if necessary, an absolute freedom from irritability, and nervousness, and a complete knowledge of the theory and practice of the game. The product of these indispensible elements is then called Phillidor, or Morphy, or Steinetz.— The Athenieum.