Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/231

Rh poems, the "Boke of the Duchesse," introduces himself in a dream as playing at chefs with Fortune, and speaks of false moves, as though dishonest tricks were sometimes practised in the game. He tells us,

At chejfe lu'ith me Jhe gan to pkyc. With hr fah dr aught e% (moves) dy-vers She Jtaale en me, and toke my fers (queen) ; And ivhanne I faugh my fers aioaye. Alias ! J kouthe no lenger playe. But fey de, " Fareivel, fivete ! yivys. And fareivel al that efer ther ys ! '" Thertvith Fortune feyde, " Chek here!" And " mate " in the myd poynt of the chekkere (chess-board), With a fmune (pawn) err ante, alias ! Ful craftier to pleye fhe was Than Athalus, that made the game Firft of the cheJp,fo was hys name. — Robert Bell's Chaucer, vol. vi. p. 157. With the breaking up of feudalilm, the game of chefs feems to have gone to a great extent out of pradice, and made way for a comparatively new game, — that of cards, which now became very popular. When Caxton printed his "Boke of ChelTe" in 1474, he fought only to publilh a moral treatife, and not to furniili his countrymen with a book of inftru£tions in the game. The cut of the cheff-player given in this book, copied in our cut No. 148, fhows fome modifications in the forms of the chelT-men. The knight, the rook, and the pawn, have preferved their old forms 5 but we are led to fuppofe, by the number of pieces with the bi-partite head, that the bifliop had affumed a ihape nearly refembling that of the rook. We have juft feen Chaucer alluding to one of the legends relating to the origin of this game. Caxton, after Jean de Vignay and Jacques de CelToles, gives us a rtrange ftory how it was invented under Evylmerodach, king of Babylon, by a philofopher, " whyche was named in Caldee Exerfes, or in Greke Philemetor." Meanwhile, the game of chefs had continued to flourilh in Italy, where it appears to have experienced improvements, and where certainly the forms of the men were confiderably modified. An Italian verfion of the work of Jacques de Cellbles was printed at Florence in 1493, under the title of Lilro dc Gitwcho dclli Scacchi, among the engravings to which, as