thought and time demanded by chess.

We have already given some specimens of the Poetry of Chess. The Chess
Philosophy itself has penetrated every direction of literature. From the
time that Miranda is "discovered playing chess with Ferdinand" in
Prospero's cell, (an early instance of "discovered mate,") the numberless
Mirandas of Romance have played for and been played for mates. Chess has
even its Mythology,--Caissa being now, we believe, generally received at
the Olympian Feasts. True, some one has been wicked enough to observe that
all chess-stories are divisible into two classes,--in one a man plays for
his own soul with the Devil, in the other the hero plays and wins a
wife,--and to beg for a chess-story _minus_ wives and devils; but such
grumblers are worthless baggage, and ought to be checked. The Chess Library
has now become an important collection. Time was, when, if one man had
Staunton's "Handbook," Sarratt, Philidor, Walker's "Thousand Games," and
Lewis on "The Game of Chess," he was regarded as uniting the character of a
chess-scholar with that of the antiquary. But now we hear of Bledow of
Berlin with eight hundred volumes on chess; and Professor George Allen, of
the University of Pennsylvania, with more than a thousand! Such a
literature has Chess collected about it since Paolo Boi, "the great
Syracusan," as he was called, wrote what perhaps was the first work on
chess, in the middle of the sixteenth century.

But such numbers of works on chess are very rare, and when the reader hears
of an enormous chess library, he may be safe in recalling the story of
Walker, whose friend turned chess author; seven years after, he boasted to
Walker of the extent of his chess library, which, he affirmed consisted of
one thousand volumes _minus_ eighteen! It turned out that eighteen copies
of his work had been sold, the rest of the edition remaining on his hands.