WHIST.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIV, Issue VII, 16 February 1895, Page 161

WHIST.

The origins of whist are vulgar and obscure. It was evolved, probably, out of Triumph, or Trump, a game referred to by Latimer in a Christmastide sermon of 1529. Rabelais names ‘Trump,’ * La Triomphe,’ about the same date as Latimer's sermon, among the amusements of Gargantua ; his date of publication is rather later, but that does not prove the game to have arisen in England before it was known in France. In 1526 the game was familiar in Italy among peasants. It is referred to in * Gammer Gurton’s Needle,' but the nature of the sport remains obscure. Sbakeepere alludes to it, in a series of puns, in ‘ Antony and Cleopatra,’ as Douce first observed. Whisk or whist is described by Cotton Walton’s * son ’in 1674. He says that almost every child of eight has the game at bis finger-ends. Hoyle came forth with the first edition of his * Short Treatise ’ in 1,743. It is not disagreeable to learn that the Duke of Cumberland once held a wonderfully good band, yet lost £20.000 on the game. But probably this Duke was not the Butcher. Short whist came in by a mere bi-section of long whist, to let Lord Peterborough have his revenge in a hurry. The old reckoning of the honours was allowed to stand, hence the actual game has a greater element of chance, which we do not think matter for regret. The game, even as it stands, is a game of fatiguing application. The player must observe, remember, forecast, and calculate. Yet some persons (usually men of entire leisure) call it a ‘ relaxation? The late Emperor of France and the novelist Lord Lytton were busy in their different ways, but both plajed whist. The Emperor was a vacillating. Lord Lytton a absentminded player. It was difficult to say d priori, what class of mind will make a whist player. Dr. Johnson did not play ; silence was not his forte. We never heard that Mr Carlyle and Macaulay were experts. Politicians like Talleyrand have often been players; literary men are nsually no more skilled than was the late Mr Pater. Mr James Payn is a familiar example of a novelist who occasionally does not disdain to take a hand, and, for a classical scholar, the late Professor Sellar was by no means proficient. But, as a rule, letters and cards do not assort well together, and probably the intellect of Mr John Stuart Mill soared above Blue Peter. It is difficult to guess why many active and acute minds are paralysed by a pack of cards, and have to announce that no inference is to tre drawn from whatever they may chance to lead.