greatest among the lakes of Equatorial Africa. So strong was the current of the river near its outlet from the lake that "the paddles proved quite useless in making headway against the stream," and the voyagers "had to pull along the edge by overhanging branches, wading where the water was not too deep." Lower down, where the river has scooped itself a channel through the mudbarrier which at the time of Stanley's visit blocked back the waters of the lake, the current was so powerful that "not for any reward would the canoe-men venture into it."

The information gathered by the various explorers of the lake, among whom Mr. Hore, owing to the care with which he recorded his observations, must be awarded the foremost place, fully justifies the authors assumption that the outflow is intermittent, and depends altogether upon the amount of precipitation, which may vary exceedingly from year to year. It is quite possible that the next traveller may find little or no water leaving the lake, for, even during the few months over which Mr. Thomson's stay extended, he noticed a perceptible difference in the amount discharged, and Tanganyika was almost visibly retiring to its normal state-that of a slightly brackish inland lake, over which evaporation and precipitation fairly balance each other. The rainfall is all the more decisive in connexion with this question, as the area drained by this huge lake is very small, and the rivers which flow into it are, with few exceptions, of insignificant size. In forming his theory of the formation of the lake, Mr. Thomson, a true disciple of his teacher, Prof. Geikie, rejects volcanic or other convulsions of nature. According to him, the "basin of the Tanganyika had its origin in the formation of a great fault or narrow depression of great and unknown depth." He brings forward good reasons for believing that there was a time when the greater portion of Central Africa was occupied by a vast inland sea, of which Tanganyika formed a part, and which has since been drained through the Congo and Zambeze. That this sea 66 was originally salt seems to be shown by the fact that many of the shells of Lake Tanganyika are of a markedly marine type." The collection of shells brought home by the author, and which Mr. Edgar Smith, of the British Museum, "one of the most remarkable additions to the conchological fauna of Central Africa that has ever been made," fully bears out this theory. Most striking among its novelties are Limnotrochus thomRi, an exact mimic of a marine trochus, and Synolopsis lacustris, which has been so named account of its great similarity to a marine nus called Syrnola. The conchological fauna of the Nyassa is quite distinct from that of langanyika; and the former of these lakes, therefore, at no time formed a part of the

describes as

great inland sea referred to.

The narrative portion of this record of travel truly reflects the individuality of the author, who revels in the task set him by the Royal Geographical Society, makes light of obstacles which would have caused others to turn back, and occasionally is a trifle indiscreet. As the leader of a caravan, he has exhibited quite remarkable gifts; and the in

fluence which he established over his band of followers, and the success with which he led 150 men into the wilds of Urua and back again without suffering a single loss from desertion, are things to marvel at in a young man scarcely merged upon manhood. May a like success attend the explorations upon which he is now engaged on behalf of the Sultan of Zanzibar! E. G. RAVENSTEIN.

VAN DER LINDE ON THE LITERATURE OF CHESS.

Quellenstudien zur Geschichte des Schachspiels. Von Dr. A. v. d. Linde. (Berlin: Julius Springer.)

(Second Notice.)

THE Quellenstudien, which must be regarded as supplementary to the author's larger History of Chess, are divided into four sections. The first, and by far the longest and most important of these, "Chess in the Middle Ages," is that with which we shall here be chiefly concerned. In this section the progress of the game is traced from its earliest home in India, through Persia and the Arabs (of course not merely in Arabia), to its first beginnings in the West; and the changes gradually introduced into European chess are illustrated by a comparison of the MS. materials of the three centuries 1200-1500 with the earliest printed books. It is from this complete presentment of the treasures of medieval chess, the unacknowledged sources of the chess problems of the Renaissance and of much that has been retained in later collections, that the book derives its title and the chief part of its value. Section ii. treats of the "Abarten," or corruptions of ancient chess, including the Chinese and Japanese varieties of the game, often described before. The third section, called "Miscellanies," deals with such subjects as ancient boards and men preserved in museums, the two latest automata, "Ajeeb " and "Mephisto," chess with living figures, anecdotes of chess players, literary curiosities such as Heinse's chessnovel Anastasia and his correspondence with Klinger, and lastly, a MS. introduction to chess, in German, dated 1728. We learn that Ajeeb means "wonder" in Arabic, and Dr. v. d. Linde makes merry with the German newspapers which followed the English transliteration instead of the proper German form "Adschib." Some of us, who have been exercised at seeing English maps reproducing the German spelling Dobrudscha for Dobruja (sometimes with startling effects upon pronunciation-we have heard Dobrudska), may be consoled to find that this species of error is not confined to the less learned nation. The list of persons otherwise distinguished who have played chess includes President Grévy and the late Prince Consort, and attests the variety of Dr. v. d. Linde's reading; but the notices are mostly exceedingly trivial, and there is a conspicuous absence of good stories. There is nothing in the whole chapter half so good as the description, in Bishop Wilberforce's Life, of the Prince playing "Vierschach" on Sunday evenings, and asking the Bishop to join, with the Bishop's explanation of how it might be right for the Prince as a layman and (sotto voce) a

It

German, but not for him, an English clergyman. We own that we think this whole section were better away. It is disappointing to see a work really scientific in its general character descending to the level of Twiss and the anecdote-mongers. Section iv. is entitled "Ex Oriente Lux," and would no doubt have found its natural place in the first part if the materials had arrived in time. is an account of the chess MSS., in Arabic and Turkish, discovered at Constantinople within the last year by Dr. Paul Schroeder, dragoman to the German embassy, to whom the entire work is dedicated. The new matter thus brought to light includes some openings and end-games from the actual play of eminent Eastern chessists, but, on the whole, seems less interesting and instructive than the earlier portion of the volume.

As has been already said, the main interest of the work centres in the record of medieval chess problems and the proofs they afford of the late origin of the modern game. It has long been known that the distinctive feature of modern chess is the enlarged power of the Queen and Bishop. The former, instead of being the most powerful piece, was originally the weakest, and, under its primitive name of Fers (Minister or Vizier), was only allowed to move one square diagonally forward or backward. The Bishop (Alfil, Elephant) moved two squares diagonally, and commanded only the square next but one to it, not the intervening square; but, as with the Knight, its command of the third square was not obstructed by any other piece that stood in the way. The period when these two pieces acquired their additional powers is now determined to have been between 1450-1500; but it may be observed that Staunton, whose authority Dr. v. d. Linde systematically disparages, had arrived with his inferior materials at a tolerably close approximation

66

66

some time in the fifteenth century" (Staunton's Praxis, p. 10). The transition period, as the present work abundantly shows, extended some way into the sixteenth. Of the early printed books included by Dr. v. d. Linde in his " Sources," the work of the Spaniard Lucena (1497) is distinctly 'transition," as he shows by giving the double set of rules; that of the Portuguese Damiano (1512) marks its author as the real founder of the modern school. Other tracts and pamphlets, hardly to be called books, down almost to the year 1550 show either a reaction in favour of the old, or at least the very slow diffusion of the new rules.

The MS. materials, known hitherto only by selections, but now printed for the first time in a complete form, follow almost without exception the earlier models. They consist almost exclusively of end-games or problems, varied only, in the case of Arabic MSS., by a few examples of tabiyat or openings, not involving, as in the modern game, a struggle for position from the very first, but apparently allowing each player a certain number of moves (eight, ten, or twelve) for the quiet development of his forces, without advancing beyond his own half of the board. These problems, when they first occur, are exhibited by Dr. v. d. Linde on diagrams; afterwards cross references are substituted for the diagrams, and serve to show to what an extent

"

The

the early collections repeat one another. earliest " source thus laid under contribution is an Arabic MS. in the British Museum, of date A.D. 1257, already partially collated by Forbes. Next follows a work compiled about the year 1283, by order of Alfonso X., or the Wise, King of Castile. The original Spanish MS. is in the library of the Escorial, and was imperfectly described by Dr. v. d. Linde in his former work; he has since had access to a complete copy made for Sir Frederick Madden under the superintendence of the well-known scholar, Don Pascual de Gayangos. The moves are first described, then follow 103 problems, to which the term "juegos de partido," used also by Lucena and corresponding to the "jochs partitis" of Vicent and the "jeux partis" of early French chess, is now first applied. Elsewhere we have in Latin "Liber de partitis Scacchorum." Contemporary with Alfonso was Nicholas de Saint Nicholai, whose collection of problems remained the standard work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. With it are associated the rules for playing of Jacobus de Cessolis, interesting as having formed the ground-work of Caxton's Game and Playe of the Chesse (1474). No less than fifteen MSS. of this collection are catalogued by Dr. v. d. Linde (Erste Jartausend, arts. 1864-78), and described in the Quellenstudien. The oldest codex is in Latin, of about the year 1300, and preserved at Florence; in it the writer calls himself "Bonus Socius," apparently the earliest protest against the notion that chess is an "unsociable game. A second recension, also in Latin, is the Parisian MS. 10286; an old French copy, at Wolfenbüttel, is that from which the knowledge of this author was first revived in modern times; the most complete, also in French, is MS. Par. 1173, in which the 192 problems of "Bonus Socius are swelled to 290. From this last we learn that the writer was a Lombard; and the recent careful investigations of Dr. Ernst Köpke, of Brandenburg, have proved the same of Jacobus de Cessolis (Jacopo da Cesole). Both had formerly been accounted Frenchmen, and the latter described as a monk of Rheims, born at a village called Cessoles, in Picardy. The remainder of the fifteen are mostly shorter selections from the foregoing. German MS. treasures are represented by a Göttingen codex, bearing traces of Spanish origin in peculiarities of spelling (estultus for stultus, &c.), but by its date, 1490-95, coming down to the incunabula of printing; and by the MS. written by Guarinus in Italy, in 1512, but now in a private collection at Berlin, containing seventy-six problems selected from "Bonus Socius." The British Museum possesses two MSS. in Old French comprising chess among other miscellaneous subjects; the Cotton MS., Cleopatra B. ix., formerly belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire; and that of Bibliotheca Regia 13 A. xviii., written in various hands of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The earliest in the English language is the Porter MS. in Mr. Rimington Wilson's collection, about 1453-54; this agrees with the older texts in presenting the moves of the Queen and Bishop according to the ancient limited fashion.

The first hint of a more powerful piece than the Rook occurs in Bonus Socius No. 29, a problem in which the Rook has the power of the Alfil, or limited Bishop's move, in addition to its own. The solution runs : Albi habent primum tractum, et volunt mattare nigros ad ij tractum, et roccus valet alfinum et roccum et utriusque tractum facit; in the French text, " & le roc uaut 1. roc et 1. aufin & fait lun trait & lautre." This, it would seem, was merely tentative, and bore no fruit for something like a century and a half. We then begin to find the two modes of play flourishing side by side; and a Florentine MS. of the fifteenth century, giving both rules, calls the new chess" alla rabbiosa," from the greater violence of the attack when so powerful a piece was added. The enlarged power of the Alfil is more obscure and difficult to trace than the transformation of the Fers into the Dama or modern Queen. On this transition period a remark of Dr. v. d. Linde's is fully borne out by the earliest printed books-namely, that the old rules continued to prevail in problems after the new had obtained a footing in practical play. It was in this way alone that the extant problems could still be made available.

The series of printed chess works begins with the now lost treatise of Vicent, in the Catalan dialect of Spanish (Valencia, 1495, quarto). Only the title-page and colophon of this work have been preserved: the former runs :

"Libre dels jochs partitis dels schachs en nombre de 100 ordenat e compost per mi Francesch vicent natural de Segorbe; the latter :

placed by Dr. v. d. Linde in a new light, greatly to the advantage of the latter Because 100 out of Lucena's 150 positions are found also in Damiano, it was assumed that they had been borrowed. In reality it is highly probable that Damiano, working independently on the same MS. materials, had never seen Lucena's book; and it is quite certain that he made a much more intelligent use of the copious stores at his command. Lucena gives the rules both of old chess (del viejo) and of new (de la dama); but he must have been a very indifferent player, and afflicted with a bad memory. It would seem that the old rules come natural to him, and that he is painfully trying to acquire the new; he gets hopelessly confused between the two, and occasionally gives the same position twice over (e.g., 44 is described as del viejo, and repeated as 73 de la dama). Damiano, on the other hand, is consistently modern in his rules, and merely gives a single example of the old leap of the Bishop; while in the openings of games he shows a distinct advance upon Lucena.

The German tracts on chess (calling it Schachzabel) of Jacob Mennel (Constance, 1507) and Jacob Köbel (Oppenheim, 1525– 35) know nothing of the modern game. The earliest French pamphlet, that of Denis Janot (without date, but between 1530-40), contains twenty-one problems, all moving equally upon the ancient lines. The title of this work has perplexed the learned editors of the German Handbuch, as well as less scholar-like persons; they speak of it more than once as "the Sen Svit "-an expression suggestive of any language rather than French. A few words of the title-page (which is too long to quote entire) are enough to clear up the mystery: SENSVIT IEVX | Partis des eschets allows us to recognise the verb s'ensuit, common enough, like "here followeth or "here beginneth," in those early times of book-making.

"A loor a gloria de nostre Redemtor Jesu Christ fonc escabat le dict libre que ha nom libre dels jochs partitis dels schachs en la insigne ciutat de Valencia e estampat per mans de Lope de Roca Alemany e Pere trincher librere." The only known copy belonged to the famous Abbey of Montserrat, near Barcelona; and Dr. v. d. Linde is above all things a great it has hitherto been believed that it was linguist. The long list of his published lost in the Carlist War of 1834, when works shows that he writes in two languages the conventual library was dispersed. We-German and his native Dutch; and his now learn, from the researches of Dr. Volger multifarious reading embraces all civilised upon early Spanish printing, that the book tongues, and some barbarous. He likes was last seen for certain in 1796, and prob- nothing better than to point out the small ably perished when the abbey was sacked by (as well as great) mistakes of other people. the French under Suchet in 1811. On the Having once occasion to refer to Cleasby and same authority, Lope de Roca Alemany is Vigfusson's Icelandic Dictionary, he appends identified with a German who printed at a (sic) to Mr. Vigfusson's name, as if Murcia under that name as early as 1487, that gentleman did not know how to spell it and whose real name must have been Wolf himself (p. 246). He is not, however, von Stein, or Wolf von Fels; Peter Trincher, uniformly happy in printing quotations from also a German, is met with at Barcelona foreign languages; and the following speci before the date of this work, and at Montserrat mens, which are not exhaustive, do not, in 1499. This is a good example of the somehow, look to us as if they were due to the thoroughness of Dr. v. d. Linde's biblio- printer. He gives the concluding words of graphical workmanship. He is less happy in the Libro del Acedrex, which recite King a suggestion that the author's name probably Alfonso's titles (p. 73): Sennor de Castiella stood in the original as vicent Vincent, e de Leon ... de Murcia, de Tahen (sic, forgetting, apparently, that Vicente is the but it should clearly be Jahen or Jaen). regular Spanish form of the name. It would Describing some chess-men traditionally have been more to the purpose to have pointed out that loor should rather be loori.e., l'onor. The next writer, and the first whose work is extant, is the Castilian Lucena (Salamanca, 1497). The comparative merits of this author and his successor, Damiano (Rome, 1512),

=

are

supposed to have belonged to Karl the Great, he quotes from a French work of 1670, "qui font [sont] de cristal," where the long s has evidently been mis-read (p. 55). Among some notices from the Cotton MS. of events at Abbotsbury, where it was written, we read (p. 192), "XVII. Kal. Oct. obiit domprius

"of course Rogerius Abbas huius loci in albis; it should be dompnus, a form of dominus well known on tombstones and monumental brasses. And lastly, the letter of an Italian correspondent is printed with such mistakes as the following (p. 221):-" Ma vuol Ella sapere dove si trova davvevo [davvero] una rarità, anzi un libro farse [forse] unico al mondo in fatto di Scacchi... Mi pane [pare] che sia un Vincent . . . Credo che questa Letizia potrebbe interessane [interessare] molto il di sei [lei] amico di Berlino." The tery same note in which this quotation xeurs contains (so Nemesis will have it) a characteristic attack on Forbes for trusting to the "baseless authority" of Staunton, and this on a point (the date of the modern game) as to which our author is in substantial agreement with those writers.

We hope that Dr. v. d. Linde will not accuse of "bauernfängerei" (with a small 6), or picking up pawns." As the Muratori or

decided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick sighted."

Let us remember this, and be charitable and patient.

maturer years.

OSCAR BROWNING.

NEW NOVELS.

monumenta inedita of the game in a form not kely to be soon superseded, and we heartily

thank him for a most valuable book. But he is just a little too fond of throwing stones at his predecessors; and we have thought it only right to point out that his own edifice is not quite free from brittle materials.

WILLIAM WAYTE.

England fused into one by the song of the nightingale common to all. Here, however, the discord which shrieks so untuneably in

"Charmides" is first heard. Mr. Wilde's audacious sensuousness should have felt that the Venus of the little Melian farm" and the Dawn of Michelangelo were too sacred to be profaned by passion.

A batch of smaller poems, including a sweetly musical tribute to the poet's college, Magdalen, and some stanzas for music, of Poems. By Oscar Wilde. (David Bogue.) which we are glad not to have the setting, is followed by "Charmides," the longest poem THIS volume has for many reasons been looked in the volume. It is full of music, beauty, for with interest. Mr. Wilde has rightly imagination, and power; but the story, or wrongly been marked out as representas far as there is one, is most repulsive. ing the newest development of academical Mr. Wilde has no magic to veil the aestheticism. He has had to undergo hideousness of a sensuality which feeds the irrational abuse and ridicule, and on statues and dead bodies. Let him the still more irrational flattery, earned by learn a lesson from the Vénus d'Ille of principles and tendencies with many of Mérimée, where the ground-thought is a bourwhich he can have but little sympathy. don of horror through the whole of the dreadful His poems will therefore be read with the story. Then come more songs, tributes to twofold purpose of discovering what these Keats and Shelley, to Florence and Greece, new teachers have to say, and what claim Mr. very musical and passionate, and some Wilde has to be heard by the public whom mediaeval ballads which would be more be addresses. That the latter claim will be effective if Mr. Calverley had never taught conceded no one who has read these poems can us the burden of "butter and eggs and a doubt. They are the product of a fresh, pound of cheese." vigorous mind, dowered with a quick perception of the beauties of nature, with a command of varied and musical language, with a sympathetic sensuousness which would gain rather than lose by the vesture of a thicker reil. Critics may blame or praise; they cannot speak of Mr. Wilde's work with contempt. But the message of the new gospel Lot delivered with so clear a note. We are bewildered by the irregular pulsations of sympathy which never wearies. Roman tholic ritual, stern Puritanism, parched Greek islands, cool English lanes and streams, Paganism and Christianity, despotism and Republicanism, Wordsworth, Milton, and Mr. Swinburne, receive in turn the same passionate devotion. Perhaps this inconsistency is more attributable to the author than to the school. Keats has told us that

We must hurry on to the last long poem, "Humanitad" (why not Humanidad?), a praise of those who have fallen martyrs to the enthusiasm of humanity, and of that enthusiasm itself as the conqueror and expeller of baser passions. We think that as Mr. Wilde's work progresses this poem will be found to mark a transition to a deeper and fuller tone than he has yet had strength to strike.

The volume ends with a lament on the bitter-sweet of love, written in a lingering metre, a trochaic Alexandrian, full of melody and pathos.

"A! what else had I to do but love you: God's

own mother was less dear to me, And less dear the Cytherean rising like an argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice and lived my poems, and though youth is gone in wasted days,

I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays."

"the imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, We have no space to justify our opinion but there is a space of life between in which by quotations, but we lay down this book the soul is in a ferment, the character un-in the conviction that England is enriched

(Smith, Elder & Co.)

Love, Honour, and Obey. By Iza Duffus Hardy. (Hurst & Blackett.)

The Husband's Secret, &c. By Richard Dowling. (Tinsley Bros.)

A Parson's Story. By Evans Heathcote, (Remington.)

Darcy and Friends. By Joseph McKim. (F. V. White & Co.)

MRS. LYNN LINTON's present book is in rather curious contrast with her ordinary work. There is nothing tragical in it, no violent social satire, no questionable allusions, and we fear we must add very little interest. An amiable but commonplace young man falls in love with an amiable but common

place young woman, and their love is for a time thwarted by the selfishness of the girl's father. This father, Frederick Branscombe, is the most elaborate character in the book. The elaboration is as usual satiric in intent, but the satire is not particularly happy. The handsome old fop who victimises his own family, and even imposes on some strangers, has been treated many times since Mr. Turveydrop, and the character is rather hackneyed. Mrs. Lynn Linton has been lavish of minor characters, but of these only two, the young widow Augusta Latrobe and her termagant of a mother, Mrs. Morshead, have much vigour or originality. According, moreover, to a too common habit with the author, she has made Mrs. Morshead not merely a tyrant, but a coarse and vulgar old scold who would certainly not have been tolerated by any neighbourhood unless her rank had been either much lower or much higher than it is represented as being. A great deal of pains is spent on two young ladies, Gip and Pip tions of harmless slang; but in whom the Pennefather, who are represented as incarnaslang seems to us to get the better of the harmlessness. The book is on the whole the weakest work of its author that we remember to have read.

The author of Mrs. Geoffrey has done her best to spoil that work of fiction. She has written it in the present tense to begin with. She has attributed to her characters a