ting him at an early period of the
game to take, seemingly for nothing but advantage, a certain knight (his
usual dodge, it appeared) which would have ensured an ultimate defeat.
However, I declined the generous offer, which began to nettle my
opponent; but when afterwards I refused to answer divers moves by the
card (as he protested I ought), and finally reduced him to a positive
checkmate, he flew into such an unclerical rage that I would not play
again; his "revenge" might be too terrible. For another trivial chess
anecdote: a very worthy old friend of mine, a rector too, was fond of
his game, and of winning it: and I remember one evening that his ancient
servitor, bringing in the chessboard, whispered to me, "Please don't
beat him again, sir,--he didn't sleep a wink last night;" accordingly,
after a respectably protracted struggle, some strange oversights were
made, and my reverend host came off conqueror: so he was enabled to
sleep happily. I remember too playing with pegged pieces in a box-board
at so strange a place as outside the Oxford coach; and I think my
amiable adversary then was one Wynell Mayow, who has since grown into a
great Church dignitary. If he lives, my compliments to him.

One of the best private chess-players I used often to encounter,--but
almost never to beat, is my old life-friend, Evelyn of Wotton, now the
first M.P. for his own ancestral Deptford. It was to me a triumph only
to puzzle his shrewdness, "to make him think," as I used to say,--and if
ever through his carelessness I managed a stale, or a draw,--very seldom
a mate,--that was glory indeed. If he sees this, his memory will
countersign it.

Let so much suffice, as perhaps a not inappropriate word about the
Literary Life's frequent mental recreation, especially, where the player
is, like Moses, "not a man of words."

One day, by the by, this text in the original, "lo ish devarim anochi"
(Exod. iv. 10), came to my lot in Pusey's Hebrew class, to my special
confusion: but every tutor was very considerate and favoured the one who
couldn't speak, and Mr. Biscoe in particular used to say when my turn
came to read or to answer,--"Never mind, Mr. Tupper, I'm sure you know
it,--please to go on, Mr. So-and-So." This habitual confidence in my
proficiency had the effect of forcing my consciousness to deserve it;
and it usually happened that I really did know, silently, like
Macaulay's cunning augur, "who knew but might not tell."

Speaking