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 his game long enough to receive the intelligence. King John was at chess when the deputies from Rouen came to inform him that Philip Augustus had besieged their city; but he would not hear them until he had finished the game. An old English MS. gives in the following sentence no very handsome picture of the chess-play of King John of England:--"John, son of King Henry, and Fulco felle at variance at Chestes, and John brake Fulco's head with the Chest-borde; and then Fulco gave him such a blow that he almost killed him." The laws of chess do not now permit the king such free range of the board. Dr. Robertson, in his History of Charles V., relates that John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, whilst he was playing with Ernest, Duke of Brunswick, was told that the Emperor had sentenced him to be beheaded before the gate of Wittenberg; he with great composure proceeded with the game, and, having beaten, expressed the usual satisfaction of a victor. He was not executed, however, but set at liberty, after five years' confinement, on petition of Mauritius. Sir Walter Raleigh said, "I wish to live no longer than I can play at chess." Rousseau speaks of himself as _forcené des échecs_, "mad after chess." Voltaire called it "the one, of all games, which does most honor to the human mind."