chess. He was the favorite of many Italian Princes, and particularly of the
Duke of Urbino, and of several Cardinals, and even of Pope Pius V. himself,
who would have given him a considerable benefice, if he would have become a
clergyman; but this he declined, that he might follow his own
inclinations. He afterward went to Venice, where a circumstance happened
which had never occurred before: he played with a person and lost. Having
afterward by himself examined the games with great care, and finding that
he ought to have won, he was astonished that his adversary should have
gained contrary to all reason, and suspected that he had used some secret
art whereby he was prevented from seeing clearly; and as he was very
devout, and was possessed of a rosary rich with many relics of saints, he
resolved to play again with his antagonist, armed not only with the rosary,
but strengthened by having previously received the sacrament: by these
means he conquered his adversary, who, after his defeat, said to him these
words,--'Thine is more potent than mine.'"

Some of the earliest writers on chess have given their idea of the
all-absorbing nature of the game in the pleasant legend, that it was
invented by the two Grecian brothers Ledo and Tyrrheno to alleviate the
pangs of hunger with which they were pressed, and that, whilst playing it,
they lived weeks without considering that they had eaten nothing.

But we need not any mythical proof of its competency in this
direction. Hyde, in his History of the Saracens, relates with authenticity,
that Al Amin, the Caliph of Bagdad, was engaged at chess with his freedman
Kuthar, at the time when Al Mamun's forces were carrying on the siege of
the city with a vigor which promised him success. When one rushed in to
inform the Caliph of his danger, he cried,--"Let me alone, for I see
checkmate against Kuthar!" Charles I. was at chess when he was informed of
the decision of the Scots to sell him to the English, but only paused from