Chapter XII: Section IX: enacts, that a pawn may become a queen, when ALL the

pieces remain on the board_. Consequently a player may have two, or a greater plurality of queens. How, enquires the player recently entered on the study of the game, is each additional queen to be represented and distinguished? By placing two pawns on one square, and pushing them about in company; a solecism in theory, a barbarism in practice. Against it, PHILIDOR, in the first edition of his work, violently inveighs. His reasons and his poignant ridicule are recorded; but he has not favoured us with the arguments by which he was afterwards induced to give it countenance. Perhaps he was overborne by a majority, prepossessed in favour of a practice, to which, from their first acquaintance with the game, they had been accustomed.

The EDITOR begs leave to suggest, that by limiting the promotion of the pawn to the highest office or, power, _vacant_, an incongruity revolting against method, may be avoided; and a moderate share of skill will still enable the player, to derive the utmost preponderance from a pawn on the eve of promotion. It is only necessary previously to offer an exchange of queens, which can seldom be refused, without surrendering the advantage of position: not to mention that the conversion of a pawn merely into a rook, would prove, in the hands of an able player, an effective acquisition.

We now enter on the consideration of Section X. It must be owned that PHILIDOR was always an advocate for the principle which pervades it, inculcating it before it was engrafted in the English code. It professes to establish, that an unmoved pawn may be disqualified from advancing two squares, by the circumstance of an adverse pawn having penetrated to the fourth square of an adjoining file. There is a refinement in this decision, which, while the mistake on which it rests lay undetected, recommended it to the ingenious. Expose the mistake which probably gave rise to it, and the rule is left without foundation. The phrase "two _steps_ the first _move_," or "two _moves_ the first _step_," an occasional substitution, was current through chess books, and with players. Hence a habit was implicitly contracted, of contemplating a pawn exercising this power, as making TWO _moves of_ ONE _square each_, not ONE _continued integral move of_ TWO _squares_. The EDITOR observes, that if the former idea be right, every one must admit the rule to be right; for who could make a journey of 20 miles, that is precluded from going the first 10. But if the latter idea be the correct one, if the pawn, at its first move, have really the power of going two squares at one effort, it is as irregular to prohibit the exercise of that power, because the pawn, were it to halt on its way, would be taken; as it would be to prohibit the bishop, the rook, or the queen, the full exercise of their greater powers, whenever there is a square in the line of their passage, at which they could not rest without being taken. Ought any of the latter pieces to be precluded from passing such a square? The absurdity of the phraseology which supports the rule is conspicuous, when extended to the queen; it would be grotesque to say, that she makes seven moves. For these reasons, in describing the properties of the pawn, in the _INTRODUCTION TO CHESS_, in the first volume, no notice is taken of this disqualification.