Jones, and Professor Duncan Forbes were mostly devoted to chess
in the East, and to arguments on the probabilities of its origin
and proofs that it came from India. The book of Forbes, the most
elaborate and latest of them, is much devoted to the Sanskrit
translations of the accounts of the ancient Hindu Chaturanga;
and descriptions of other games which, however able and
interesting from a scientific point of view, observation and
experience seem to indicate to us, few care to follow or study
much in the present day.

The period of 750 to 1500 is dismissed by Forbes in less than a
single page. His work contains no account of Philidor or his works,
nor of the progress of chess in this century up to 1860 when his
own book appears, and makes no mention of modern chess events or
players and it is an expensive work when viewed by popular notions
on the subject. These foregoing works with the admirable
contributions and treatises of the Rev. R. Lambe, the Hon. Daines
Barrington, F. Douce, H. Twiss, P. Pratt, Sir F. Madden,
W. Lewis, Sarratt, George Walker, C. Kenny, C. Tomlinson,
Captain Kennedy, Staunton and Professor Bland all combined fail
to supply our wants, besides which there is no summing up of them
or their parts, or attempt to blend them into one harmonious
whole, and each writer has appeared too well satisfied with his
own conclusions to care to trouble himself much about those of
anybody else.

The Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French writers who refer
to chess, and in our own country Chaucer, Lydgate, Caxton,
Barbiere, Pope, Dryden, Philidor, and the Encyclopaediasts deal
mainly with traditions, each having a pet theory; all, however,