“Check to your king!” cried the major; “while you are considering of the best way to get his majesty out of the scrape, I will endeavour to extricate the vicar out of the quagmire in which he is floundering. My dear Mr. Twaddleton,” continued the major, “you speak as if it were an admitted fact that the ‘_ludus latrunculorum_’ was synonymous with our chess. I admit that it was a game played with _Tesseræ_ or squares, and _Calculi_ or pieces; but it does not follow that it must have been chess; indeed, the learned Dr. Hyde, whose researches into Oriental games are as much distinguished for accurate discrimination as for profound scholarship, considers it to have resembled our _draughts_.”[72] “You are to move, major,” said Mr. Seymour. “Then I shall take your castle, and open a fresh battery upon the vicar,” replied Major Snapwell. “So you may,” cried Mr. Twaddleton, “but you will not easily drive me from my position; supported as I am by Vossius and Salmasius, and an army of valiant combatants.” “The learned Hyde has endeavoured to prove that chess was first invented in India, and passed from thence to Persia and Arabia.(54) Fabricius considered it a Persian game, and I must say that I am inclined to coincide with him. The terms in present use may evidently be traced to an Oriental source. _Schach_, in the Persian language, signifies king, and _schachmat_, whence our _check-mate_, the king is dead, the original words having been transformed by progressive changes; thus we have _schach_, _echecs_, _chess_; and by a whimsical concurrence of circumstances, have arisen the English words _check_, and _exchequer_.” “I take your _queen_,” cried Mr. Seymour. “Ay; and I take a _bishop_ in return,” said the major. “Well,” observed the vicar, “if an Oriental nation really gave origin to the game, it could not, at all events, have been China; since the policy of that people is to exclude females from every kind and degree of influence and power, whereas the _queen_ at chess is a powerful and important piece.” “You must not lay too much stress upon the names of the several pieces,” observed the major, “since they have varied in different ages and countries. The castle is sometimes called the _rook_, from the Italian word _rocca_, which signifies a fortress placed on a rock: the piece which we call the _Bishop_ has been termed by English writers _alphan_, _aufin_, &c. from an Arabic word, signifying an elephant; sometimes it was named an _archer_; by the Germans, the _hound_ or _runner_; by Russians and Swedes, the _elephant_; by Poles, the _priest_; and by the French, at a very early period, the _fou_ or _fool_; the reason of this last appellation seems to be, that as this piece stands on the sides of the king and queen, some wag of the times styled it the _fool_, because anciently royal personages were commonly thus attended, from want of other means of amusing themselves.”