being drawn. In England chess matches have been played annually since 1873 between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, seven players on each side. Up to 1907 Oxford won eleven matches, Cambridge twenty-one, and three were drawn.
Literature of the Game.—The first known writer on chess was Jacobus de Cessolis (Jacopo Dacciesole), whose main object, however, though he gives the moves, &c., was to teach morals rather than chess. He was a Dominican friar, and his treatise, Solatium Ludi Scacchorum, scilicet, Libellus de Moribus Hominum et Officiis Nobilium, was written before the year 1200. It was afterwards translated into French, and in the year 1474 Caxton, under the title of The Game and Playe of Chesse, printed an English translation of the French version.
In 1490 we have the Göttinger Handschrift, a work containing nine different openings and fifty problems. The author of this manuscript is not known. Then comes Vicent, a Spanish writer, whose book bears date 1495. Only the title-page has been preserved, the rest of the work having been lost in the first Carlist war. Of Lucena, another Spanish author who wrote in or about 1497, we are better informed. His treatise, Repeticion des Amores y Arte de Axedres, comprises various practical chess matters, including 150 positions, illustrated by 160 well-executed woodcuts. Various of these positions are identical with those in the Göttinger Handschrift.In the 16th century works upon the game were written by Damiano, Ruy Lopez and Horatio Gianutio della Mantia; in the 17th century by Salvio, Polerio, Gustavus Selenus, Carrera, Greco, Fr. Antonio and the authors of the Traité de Lausanne; in the 18th century by Bertin, Stamma, Ercole del Rio, Lolli, Cozio, Philidor, Ponziani, Stein, van Nyevelt, Allgaier and Peter Pratt; in the 19th century by J. F. W. Koch and C. F. Koch, Sarratt, John Cochrane, Wm. Lewis, Silberschmidt, Ghulam Kassim and James Cochrane, George Walker, A. MacDonnell, Jaenisch, Petroff, von Bilguer, von der Lasa, Staunton, Kling and Horwitz, Bledow, Dubois, Kieseritzki, Max Lange, Löwenthal, Dufresne, Neumann, Suhle, Zukertort, Preti and others.
English chess owes much to W. Lewis and George Walker. But to Howard Staunton must be ascribed the most important share in creating the later popularity which the game achieved in England. Staunton’s first work, The Chess Player’s Handbook, was published in 1847, and again (revised) in 1848. For want of further adequate revision many of its variations are now out of date; but taking the handbook as it was when issued, very high praise must be bestowed upon the author. His other works are: The Chess Player’s Text-Book and The Chess Player’s Companion (1849) (the latter being a collection of his own games), the Chess Praxis (1860), republished in 1903, his posthumous Work, Chess Theory and Practice, edited by R. B. Wormald (1876), and various smaller treatises. The laws of the game as laid down in the Praxis formed the basis of the rules adopted by the British Chess Association in 1862. Besides editing The Chess Player’s Chronicle and The Chess World, he was the chess editor of The Illustrated London News from 1844 till his death in 1874.
Among continental chess authorities von Heydebrandt und der Lasa (more usually known by his second title) stood pre-eminent. The German Handbuch was completed in 1843 by von Bilguer, who died before the first edition was completed. The second, third, fourth and fifth editions (the last published in 1874) were edited and revised by von der Lasa.
Among the more important modern works the following may be mentioned: Vasquez, El Ajedrez de memoria; La Odisea de Pablo Morphy (Havana, 1893); Bauer, Schachlexikon (Leipzig, 1893); Jean Dufresne, Kleines Lehrbuch des Schachspiels (6th ed., Leipzig, 1893); E. Freeborough and Rev. C. E. Ranken, Chess Openings, Ancient and Modern; Arnelung, Baltische Schachblätter, &c. (Berlin, 1893); Bachman, Geistreiche Schachpartien (containing a number of brilliant games) (Ansbach, 1893–1899); E. H. Bird, Chess History and Reminiscences (London, 1893); The Steinitz-Lasker Match (1894); Chess Novelties (1895); Max Lange, Paul Morphy (1894); C. Bardeleben and J. Mieses, Lehrbuch des Schachspiels (very useful); Jas. Mason, The Principles of Chess in Theory and Practice (1894); The Art of Chess (1895); Social Chess (Horace Cox, London); Dr Tarrasch, Dreihundert Schachpartien (Leipzig, 1895); Dr Eugen V. Schmidt, Syslematische Anordung von Schacheröffnungen (Veit & Co., Leipzig, 1895); Numa Preti, A B C des échecs (Paris, 1895); C. Salvioli, Teoria generate del giuoco degli Scacchi (Livorno, 1895): W. Steinitz, Modern Chess Instructor (New York, 1895); L. Hoffer, Chess (Routledge); E. Freeborough, Select Chess End-Games (London, 1895); Euclid, The Chess Ending King and Queen against King and Rook (London, 1895); Tassilo von Heydebrandt und der Laaa, Leitfaden des Schachspiels and Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Schachspiels (Leipzig, 1897); Dr. Lasker, Common Sense in Chess (London, 1896); Oscar Cordel, Neuester Leitfaden des Schachspiels (Berlin, 1896); and a vast number of other publications.
Further, The London Tournament Book (1883); Twelve Tournament Books of the German Chess Association (Veit & Co., Leipzig); The Hastings Tournament Book (London, 1896); The Vienna Tournament Book, by Halprin and Marco (1900); The Nuremberg Tournament Book, by Dr Tarrasch; The Book of the London Congress, by L. Hoffer (Longman, 1899); The Paris Tournament Book (Paris, 1900), by Rosenthal, &c.
The following are some of the best works in English on chess problems:—“J. B.” of Bridport, Chess Strategy (1865); F. Healey, A Collection of 200 Chess Problems (1866); English Chess Problems, edited by James and W. T. Pierce (1876); H. J. C. Andrews, E. N. Frankenstein, B. G. Laws, and C. Planck, The Chess Problem Text-Book (1887); A. F. Mackenzie, Chess: its Poetry and its Prose (Jamaica, 1887); J. A. Miles, Chess Stars (self-mates), (1888); James Rayner, Chess Problems (1890); B. G. Laws, The Two-Move Chess Problem (1890); The Chess Bouquet, compiled by F. R. Gittins (1897); Mr and Mrs T. B. Rowland, The Problem Art (2nd ed., 1898); E. B. Cook, T. Henery and C. A. Gilberg, American Chess-Nuts (1868); Samuel Loyd, Chess Strategy (1878); W. H. Lyons, Chess-Nut Burrs and how to open them (1886); C. A. Gilberg, Crumbs from the Chess Board (1890); Canadian Chess Problems, edited by C. F. Stubbs (1890); W. Pulitzer, Chess Harmonies (1894); G. E. Carpenter (N. Preti of Paris), 200 Chess Problems (1900).
CHEST (Gr. κίστη, Lat. cista, O. Eng. cist, cest,&c.), a large box of wood or metal with a hinged lid. The term is also used of a variety of kinds of receptacle; and in anatomy is transferred to the portion of the body covered by the ribs and breastbone (see Respiratory System). In the more ordinary meaning chests are, next to the chair and the bed, the most ancient articles of domestic furniture. The chest was the common receptacle for clothes and valuables, and was the direct ancestor of the “chest of drawers,” which was formed by enlarging the chest and cutting up the front. It was also frequently used as a seat. Indeed, in its origin it took in great measure the place of the chair, which, although familiar enough to the ancients, had become a luxury in the days when the chest was already an almost universal possession. The chief use of chests was as wardrobes, but they were also often employed for the storing of valuables. In the early middle ages the rich possessed them in profusion, used them as portmanteaux, and carried them about from castle to castle. These portable receptacles were often covered with leather and emblazoned with heraldic designs. As houses gradually became less sparsely furnished, chests and beds and other movables were allowed to remain stationary, and the chest lost its covered top, and took the shape in which we best know it—that of an oblong box standing upon raised feet. As a rule it was made of oak, but it was sometimes of chestnut or other hard wood.
There are, properly speaking, three types of chest—the domestic, the ecclesiastical and the strong box or coffer. Old domestic chests still exist in great number and some variety, but the proportion of those earlier than the latter part of the Tudor period is very small; most of them are Jacobean in date. Very frequently they were made to contain the store of house-linen which a bride took to her husband upon her marriage. In the 17th century Boulle and his imitators glorified the marriage-coffer until it became a gorgeous casket, almost indeed a sarcophagus, inlaid with ivory and ebony and precious woods, and enriched with ormolu, supported upon a stand of equal magnificence. The Italian marriage-chests (cassone) were also of a richness which was never attempted in England. The main characteristics of English domestic chests (which not infrequently are carved with names and dates) are panelled fronts and ends, the feet being formed from prolongations of the “stiles” or side posts. There were, however, exceptions, and a certain number of 17th-century chests have separate feet, either circular or shaped after the indications of a somewhat later style. There is usually a strong architectural feeling about the chest, the front being divided into panels, which are plain in the more ordinary examples, and richly carved in the choicer ones. The plinth and frieze are often of well-defined guilloche work, or are carved with arabesques or conventionalized flowers. Architectural detail, especially the detail of wainscoting, has indeed been followed with considerable fidelity, many of the earlier chests being carved in the linenfold pattern, while the Jacobean examples are often mere reproductions of the pilastered and recessed oaken mantelpieces of the period. Occasionally a chest is seen which is inlaid with coloured woods, or with
