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PLAYING CARDS.

FACTS AND SPECULATIONS
ON THE
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
OF
PLAYING CARDS.

BY

WILLIAM ANDREW CHATTO.

Hæc mihi charta nuces, hæc est mihi charta fritillus.—Martial.

With Cards I while my leisure hours away,

And cheat old Time; yet neither bet nor play.

LONDON:
JOHN RUSSELL SMITH,
OLD COMPTON STREET, SOHO SQUARE.
MDCCCXLVIII.

PRINTED BY C. AND J. ADLARD, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.

PREFACE.

Should a person who has never bestowed a thought on the subject ask, "What can there be that is interesting in the History of Cards?" it is answered, "There may be much." There is an interest, of a certain kind, even in the solution of a riddle, or the explication of a conundrum; and certain learned men, such as Père Daniel, and Court de Gebelin, having assumed that the game of Cards was originally instructive, and that the figures and marks of the suits are emblematic, speaking to the intelligent of matters of great import, their amusingly absurd speculations on the subject—set forth with all the gravity of a "budge doctor" determining ex cathedra—impart to the History of Cards an interest which, intrinsically, it does not possess. But putting aside all that may relate to their covert meaning, cards, considered with respect to what they simply are—the instruments of a popular game, and the productions of art—suggest several questions, the investigation of which is not without interest: Where and when were they invented, and what is the origin of their names? When were they introduced into Europe? What has been their progress as a popular game; and what influence have they had on society? What changes have they undergone with respect to the figures and the marks of the suits; and to what purposes have picture and fancy cards been made subservient, in consequence of those in common use being so generally understood? And lastly, what have been the opinions of moralists and theologians with respect to the lawfulness of the game?—Such are the topics discussed, and questions examined, in the following pages.

Of the works of previous writers on the origin of Cards I have freely availed myself; using them as guides when I thought them right, pointing out their errors when I thought them wrong, and allowing them to speak for themselves whenever they seemed instructive or amusing. Having no wish to appropriate what was not my own, I have quoted my authorities with scrupulous fidelity; and am not conscious of an obligation which I have not acknowledged. Should the reader not obtain from this work all the information on Cards which he might have expected, it is hoped that he will at least acquire from its perusal a knowledge of the true value of such investigations. Between being well informed on a subject, and knowing the real worth of such information, there is a distinction which is often overlooked, especially by antiquaries.

In the Illustrations will be found a greater variety of Cards than have hitherto been given in any other work on the same subject, not excepting the splendid publication of the Society of Bibliophiles Français, entitled 'Jeux de Cartes Tarots et de Cartes Numérales du Quatorzième au Dix-huitième Siècle.' All the cards—with the exception of the French Valets, at p. 250, and the Portuguese Chevaliers, at p. 252,—have been copied by Mr. F. W. Fairholt; and all the wood-engravings—with the exception of the tail-piece, by W. J. Linton, at p. 330,—have been executed by Mr. George Vasey.

W. A. C.

London;
17th April, 1848.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

of

PLAYING CARDS.

CHAPTER I.
OF THE ORIGIN AND NAME OF CARDS

Man has been distinctively termed "a cooking animal;" and Dr. Franklin has defined him to be "a tool-making animal." He may also, with equal truth, be defined to be "a gambling animal;" since to gamble, or venture, on chance, his own property, with the hope of winning the property of another, is as peculiar to him, in distinction from other animals, as his broiling a fish after he has caught it with his hands, or making for himself a stone hatchet to enable him to fell a tree. Whether this gambling peculiarity is to be ascribed to the superiority of his intellectual or of his physical constitution, others may determine for themselves.

Other animals, in common with man, will fight for meat, drink, and lodging; and will do battle for love as fiercely as the ancient knights of chivalry, whose great incitements to heroic deeds—in plain English, killing and wounding—were ladye-love and the honour of the peacock. There is, however, no well-authenticated account of any of the lower orders of animals ever having been seen risking their property at "odd or even," or drawing lots for choice of pasturage. No shepherd has ever yet succeeded in teaching his sagacious colley to take a hand at cards with him on the hill side; the most knowing monkey has never been able to comprehend the mysteries of "tossing;" and even the learned pig, that tells people their fortune by the cards, is never able to learn what is trumps.

Seeing, then, that to gamble is exclusively proper to man,—secundum essentiam consecutive,—and admitting that,

"The proper study of mankind is man,"

it plainly follows, that as Playing Cards are the instruments of the most fascinating species of gambling that ever was devised by the ingenuity of man, their origin and history are a very proper subject for rational discussion. The cooking, tool-making, gambling animal displays its rationality, according to Dr. Franklin, by its knowing how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.

Judging from the manner in which the origin and history of Playing Cards have been treated by various authors within the last hundred and fifty years, it is evident that the subject, whatever they may have made of it, is one of great "capability," to use the favorite term of a great designer in the landscape-gardening line; and it seems no less evident that some of those authors have been disposed to magnify its apparent insignificance by associating it with other topics, which are generally allowed to be both interesting and important. In this respect they have certainly shown great tact; for though many learned men have, at different periods, written largely and profoundly on very trifling subjects, yet it does seem necessary for a man, however learned and discreet, to set forth, either in his title-page or in his proemium, something like an apology for his becoming the historiographer of Playing Cards,—things in themselves slightly esteemed even by those who use them most, and frequently termed by pious people "the devil's books." The example which has thus been set I am resolved to follow; for though, in the title-page, I announce no other topic for the purpose of casting a borrowed light on the principal subject, I yet wish the reader to understand that I am writing an apology for it now; and in the progress of the work I doubt not that I shall be found as discursive as most of those who have previously either reasoned or speculated on Playing Cards.

A history of Playing Cards, treating of them in all their possible relations, associations, and bearings, would form nearly a complete cyclopædia of science and art; and would still admit of being further enlarged by an extensive biographical supplement, containing sketches of the lives of celebrated characters who have played at cards,—or at any other game. Cards would form the centre—the point, having position, but no space,—from which a radius of indefinite extent might sweep a circle comprehending not only all that man knows, but all that he speculates on. The power of reach, by means of the point and the radius, being thus obtained, the operator has his choice of topics; and can arrange them round his centre, and colour them at his will, as boys at school colour their fanciful segments of a circle.

To exemplify what has just been said about the capability of cards as a subject of disquisition:—One writer, Père Menestrier, [1] preluding on the invention of cards, says, apropos to the term Jeu—ludus, a game—that, to the Supreme Being the creation of the world was only a kind of game; and that schoolmasters with the Romans were called Ludi Magistri—masters of the game or sport. Here, then, is a fine opportunity for a descant on creation; and for showing that the whole business of human life, from the cradle to the grave, is but a game; that all the world is a great "gaming-house,"—to avoid using a word offensive to ears polite,—

"And all the men and women merely players."

Illustrative of this view of human life, a couple of pertinent quotations, from Terence and Plutarch, are supplied by another brother of the same craft, M. C. Leber. [2]

According to Père Daniel, [3]—a reverend father of the order of Jesuits, who wrote an elaborate history of the French Military Establishments,—the game of Piquet is symbolic, allegorical, military, political, and historical, and contains a number of important maxims relating to war and government. Now, granting, for the sake of argument, that the game, with respect to its esoteric principles, is really enigmatic, it may be fairly denied that Père Daniel has succeeded in explaining it correctly; his fancied discoveries may be examined in detail, and shown, with very little trouble, to be the mere seethings of his own working imagination; others may be proposed, and, as a matter of course, supported by authorities, ancient and modern, on the origin, use, and meaning of symbols and allegories, and illustrated with maxims of war and state policy, carefully selected from the bulletins, memoirs, and diplomatic correspondence of the great military chiefs and statesmen of all nations: thus a respectable volume—in point of size at least—might be got up on the subject of Piquet alone, without trenching on the wide field of cards in general.

Court de Gebelin,[4] a Gnostic, at least in the philosophic, if not in the religious, sense of the word, finds in the old Italian Tarocchi cards the vestiges of the learning of the ancient Egyptians, somewhat mutilated and disguised, indeed, by Gothic ignorance, which suspected not the profound knowledge concealed in its playthings, but still intelligible to the penetrating genius which initiates itself into all ancient mysteries, is fond of exploring the profoundly obscure, and becomes oracular, talking confidently of what it sees, when it is only groping in the dark. Court de Gebelin's theory suggests at once a general history of science and art, which, as everybody knows, had their cradle in ancient Egypt, and induces dim, but glorious visions of the ancient Egyptian kings,—Sesonch, Rameses, and Amonoph: the chronologers, Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus, follow, as a matter of course, whether originally known from Bishop Cumberland, or from Mr. Jenkinson, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' Then who can think of the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, and of its essence being contained in the symbolic characters of a pack of cards, without hieroglyphic writing coming into his mind? [5] and this subject, being once started, leads naturally, in chronological order, to Clemens Alexandrinus, Horapollo, Athanasius Kircher, Bishop Warburton, Dr. Thomas Young, and Mons. Champollion. To write properly a history of Playing Cards in connexion with the learning of the Egyptians, as suggested by the dissertation of Court de Gebelin, would require the unwearied energy of one of those brazen-bowelled scholars who flourished at Alexandria when ancient science and art, sinking into a state of second childhood, had again found a cradle in Egypt. Oh, Isis, mother of Horus, how is thy image multiplied! Though changed in name, millions still worship it, ignorant of the type of that before which they bow. [6] All is symbol: the cards of the gamester are symbolic; full of meaning of high import, and yet he is ignorant of it, cares not to know it, though Court de Gebelin would teach him; is indifferent about his soul, and prays only that he may hold a good hand of trumps,—symbol again! [7]

As cards are printed on paper, from engraved blocks of wood, and as wood-engraving appears to have suggested the art of typography, or printing from moveable types, Breitkopf combines in one general essay his inquiries into the origin of playing cards, the introduction of linen paper, and the beginning of wood-engraving in Europe; [8] this essay being but a portion of the author's intended History of Printing. Singer [9] follows very nearly the same plan as Breitkopf; but though his Researches form a goodly quarto, both in point of size and appearance, he yet has not looked into every corner. The wide field of Playing Cards still admits of further cultivation; for, though often turned up by the heavy subsoil plough of antiquarian research and well harrowed by speculation, it remains undrained.

In the 'Nouvelles Annales des Voyages,' [10] we find a dissertation by M. Rey, on Playing Cards, and the Mariner's Compass; apparently two incongruous things, yet indissolubly connected by the fleur-de-lis, which is to be seen on the drapery of some of the court or coat cards, and which also forms an ornament to the north point. It appears that this dissertation on cards and the compass is but a fragment of a work composed by M. Rey, on the flag, colours, and badges of the French monarchy. Judging of his talents, from this "fragment," he appears to have been admirably fitted to write a general history of cards; and it is to be regretted that he did not give to his so-called "fragment," that comprehensive title, and introduce the essay on the mariner's compass and the history of the French flag as incidental illustrations of the fleur-de-lis, for certainly the fragment on cards,—rent from a history of the French flag,—does seem a little out of place, in a general collection of voyages and travels, unless, indeed, it be there introduced as a traveller's tale.

Mons. C. Leber, one of the most recent writers on Playing Cards,[11] is an author, whom it is very difficult to follow in his devious course; for though he is always picking up something that appears to relate to his subject, he yet does not seem to have had any clear idea of what he was seeking for. The grand questions, he says, are, "Where do cards come from; what are they; what do they say; and what ought we to think of them?" These questions, however, Mons. Leber, by no means undertakes to answer. He confines himself, as he says, to a very narrow path—a very crooked one too, he might have added—avoiding the wide and flowery field of conjecture, but diligently amassing facts to guide other inquirers into the origin and primary use of Playing Cards. He is certain that they are of ancient origin, and of Eastern invention; and that primarily they constituted a symbolic and moral game. He professes to be guided in his researches by the evidence of cards themselves; but though a diligent collector of cards of all kinds, he does not appear to have been successful in extracting answers from his witnesses. They all stand mute. In short, Mons. Leber, notwithstanding his diligence as a collector of cards, and his chiffonier-like gathering of scraps connected with them, has left their history pretty nearly the same as he found it. In the genuine spirit of a collector, he still longs for more old cards,—but then, how to find them? Such precious reliques are not to be obtained by mere labour; they turn up fortuitously, mostly in the covers of old books, and as none that have hitherto been discovered explain their origin and presumed emblematic meaning, it is a chance that the materials for a full and complete history of Playing Cards will ever be obtained. "In the mean time," says Mons. Leber, "we must wait till this work of time and perseverance shall be accomplished." [12] To interpret his words from his own example, "to wait," may mean, to keep moving without advancing, like a squirrel in a wheel. Notwithstanding all the old cards that have been discovered, and all that has been collected on the subject, from both tale and history, "how far are we from possessing," exclaims Mons. Leber, "and who shall ever amass, all the elements necessary for a positive history of playing cards." [13] Thus much may serve by way of introduction, and as evidence of the "capability" of the subject.

Man, as a gambling animal, has the means of indulging in his hopeful propensity, as soon as he has acquired a property either real or personal, and can distinguish odd from even, or a short straw from a shorter. The first game that he played at, in the golden age of happy ignorance, would naturally be one of pure chance. We have no positive information about this identical game in any ancient or modern author; but we may fairly suppose, for no one can prove the supposition to be false, that it was either "drawing lots," or guessing at "odd or even." [14] Imagination suggests that the stakes might be acorns, or chesnuts; and though reason may "query the fact," yet she cannot controvert it. It is evident that at either of the two simple games above named, a player, when it came to his turn to hold, might improve his chance of winning, by means of a little dexterous management, vulgarly called cheating, and thus, to a certain extent, emancipate himself from the laws of blind Fortune,—a personification of chance which a gambler, most assuredly, first elevated to the rank of a divinity. [15] That cheating is nearly coeval with gaming, cannot admit of a doubt; and it is highly probable that this mode of giving an eccentric motion to Fortune's wheel was discovered, if not actually practised, at the first regular bout, under the oaks of Dodona, or elsewhere, before the flood of Thessaly. [16]

Man, having left the woods for the meadows, progressing from the sylvan or savage state to that of a shepherd, now not only roasts his chesnuts, but also eats a bit of mutton to them; and after having picked the leg clean, forms of the small bones, between the shank and the foot, new instruments of gaming. Taking a certain number of those bones, three for instance, he makes on four sides of each a certain number of marks: on one side a single point, and on the side opposite six points; on another side three points, and on the opposite four. Putting these bones into a cow's horn, he shakes them together, and then throws them out; and accordingly, as the points may run high, or as the cast may be of three different numbers, so does he count his game. [17] Conventional rules for playing are now established; definite values, independent of the number of points, are assigned to different casts; some being reckoned high, while others are counted low, and sometimes positively against the player, although the chance of their turning up be the same as that of the former. The game now becomes more complicated; and the chances being more numerous, and the odds more various, a knowing gamester who plays regularly, and makes a calculation of the probability of any given number, or combination of points, being thrown, either at a single cast, or out of a certain number, has an advantage in betting over his more simple-minded competitors. "Luck is all!" exclaims the novice,—and guesses; the adept mutters, "Knowledge is power,"—and counts.

The cutting of bones into cubes, or dice, and numbering them on all their six sides, would probably be the next step in gaming; and there are grounds for supposing that the introduction of dice was shortly followed by the invention of something like backgammon; a game which affords greater scope for calculation than dice, and allows also of the player displaying his skill in the management of his men. Should it be asked, what has any of those games to do with the origin of cards? I answer, in the words of an Irish guide, when pointing out to a traveller several places which he was not wanting to find,—"Well, then, none of them's it."

The next game, which it seems necessary to notice, is the Πεττεια of the Greeks, and the Latrunculi of the Latins; as in the sequel it may perhaps be found to have some positive, though remote, relation to the game of cards. It would be superfluous here to inquire if the game of Πεττεια, or Latrunculi, were really that which was invented by Palamedes during the Trojan War; it may be sufficient to remark, that it is mentioned by Homer, who, in the first book of the Odyssey, represents Penelope's suitors playing at it:

"Before the door they were amusing themselves at tables,

Sitting on the skins of oxen which they themselves had killed." [18]

In whatever country the game may have been invented, or however it may have been originally played, it was certainly not a game of chance. It was a scientific game requiring the exercise of the mind, and wholly dependent as to its result on the comparative skill of the two players; he who displayed the greatest judgment in moving his pieces, according to the rules of the game, being the winner. [19]

This game appears to have been similar to that described in Strutt's 'Sports and Pastimes,' under the name of Merrels, which is still played in many parts of England, and which was, and may be still, a common game in almost every country in Europe. It appears to have branched out into several species, with the Greeks and Romans; and though, in some of them, the game was very intricate, it yet never attained with those people to the perfection of chess. One of those varieties of Petteia, or Latrunculi, seems to have been very like the game of draughts; it was played with pieces or men, of two different colours, placed on a board divided into several squares, and a man of one party could be taken by the opponent when he succeeded in inclosing it between two of his own. [20]

Whatever may have been the origin of chess, it seems to be generally admitted that the game, nearly the same in its principles as it is now played,—with its board of sixty-four squares, and men of different grades,—was first devised in India; and, without giving implicit credit to the well-known account of its invention by an Indian named Sissa, we may assume that the date assigned to it, namely, about the beginning of the fifth century of the Christian era, is sufficiently correct for all practical purposes: a difference of two or three hundred years, either one way or the other, is of very little importance in a conjecture about the game, as connected with Playing Cards. Having now arrived at Chess, we fancy that we see something like "land," though it may be but a fog-bank after all. To speak without figure, it seems likely that the game of cards was suggested by that of chess.

The affinity of the two games, and the similarity between the coat cards and the principal pieces in the game of chess, have already been pointed out by Breitkopf; [21] and he is so copious on the latter topic, that he has left but little for any of his successors to do, in this respect, except to condense his diffuse notes; for, as was said of William Prynne, his brains are generally to be found scattered about the margin of his works, and not in the text.

A side, or suit, of chessmen consists of six orders, which in the old oriental game were named—1, Schach, the king; 2, Pherz, the general; 3, Phil, the elephant; 4, Aspen-suar, the horseman, or chevalier; 5, Ruch, the camel; and, 6, Beydel or Beydak, the footmen or infantry. In this suit there was no queen, as the introduction of a female into a game representing the stratagems of war would have been contrary to the oriental ideas of propriety; and long after the introduction of chess into Europe, the second piece, now called the Queen, retained its Eastern name under the form of Fierce, Fierche, or Fierge, even after it had acquired a feminine character. [22] Fierge at length becomes confounded with the French Vierge, a maid; and finally, the piece is called Dame, the lady, and so becomes thoroughly European, both in name and character. With respect to the changes which the other pieces have undergone in the European game of chess, it is only necessary to observe that Phil, the elephant, is now the Fol or Fou of the French, and the Bishop of the English; Aspen-suar, the horseman, is the French Chevalier, and the English Knight; Ruch, the camel, is the French Tour, and the English Rook or Castle; and the Beydel or Beydak, the footmen, are now the French Pions, and the English Pawns.

Now the very same change that has taken place in the second piece in chess—namely, from a male to a female—has also happened to the second principal figure in French and English cards. Among the oldest numeral cards that have yet been discovered no Queen is to be found; the three principal figures or coat cards being the King, the Knight, and the Valet or Knave. There was no Queen in the old Spanish pack of cards; nor was there usually in the German in the time of Heineken and Breitkopf. In the Spanish, the coat cards of each suit were the King (Rey), the Knight (Cavallo), and the Knave, groom, or attendant (Sota); in the German, the King (König), a chief officer (Ober), and a Subaltern (Unter). [23] The Italians, instead of making any change in the old coat cards, sometimes added the Queen to them, so that they had four instead of three, namely, Re, Reina, Cavallo, and Fante.

The following extracts from an Essay on the Indian Game of Chess, by Sir William Jones, printed in the second volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' seem to establish more clearly than anything that has been expressly written on the subject, either by Breitkopf or others, the affinity between cards and chess: "If evidence be required to prove that chess was invented by the Hindus, we may be satisfied with the testimony of the Persians; who, though as much inclined as other nations to appropriate the ingenious inventions of a foreign people, unanimously agree, that the game was imported from the west of India, together with the charming fables of Vishnusarman in the sixth century of our era. It seems to have been immemorially known in Hindustan by the name of Chaturanga, that is the FOUR angas, or members of an army, which are said, in the Amaracosha, to be elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers; and in this sense the word is frequently used by epic poets in their descriptions of real armies. By a natural corruption of the pure Sanscrit word, it was changed by the old Persians into Chatrang; but the Arabs, who soon after took possession of their country, had neither the initial nor final letter of that word in their alphabet, and consequently altered it further into Shatranj, [24] which found its way presently into the modern Persian, and at length into the dialects of India, where the true derivation of the name is known only to the learned. Thus has a very significant word in the sacred language of the Brahmans been transferred by successive changes into Axedras, Scacchi, Echecs, Chess; and, by a whimsical concurrence of circumstances, given birth to the English word check, and even a name to the Exchequer of Great Britain.

"Of this simple game, so exquisitely contrived, and so certainly invented in India, I cannot find any account in the classical writings of the Brahmans. It is indeed confidently asserted that Sanscrit books on Chess exist in this country; and if they can be procured at Benares, they will assuredly be sent to us. At present, I can only exhibit a description of a very ancient Indian game of the same kind; but more complex, and, in my opinion, more modern than the simple chess of the Persians. This game is also called Chaturanga, but more frequently Chaturaji, or the Four Kings, since it is played by four persons, representing as many princes, two allied armies combating on each side. The description is taken from the Bhawishya Puran, in which Yudhist'hir is represented conversing with Vyasa, who explains, at the king's request, the form of the fictitious warfare, and the principal rules of it. 'Having marked eight squares on all sides,' says the sage, 'place the red army to the east, the green to the south, the yellow to the west, and the black the north.'" [25]—It is worthy of remark, that these colours form the ground of four of the suits of one of the divisions of an eight-suit pack of Hindostanee cards.

It appears that in this game the moves were determined by casts with dice, as in backgammon, so that it was one of chance as well as skill. On this point Sir William Jones observes: "The use of dice may, perhaps, be justified in a representation of war, in which fortune has unquestionably a great share, but it seems to exclude Chess from the rank which has been assigned to it among the sciences, and to give the game before us the appearance of Whist, except that pieces are used only instead of cards, which are held concealed."

Though Sir William Jones mentions Whist in particular, it is yet apparent, from his own description, that the similarity of Chaturaji to any other game of cards played by four persons is precisely the same. This evidence of the similarity, between a game of cards and an ancient Indian game of chess, is the more important, as the fact appears to have forced itself upon the notice of the writer, rather than to have been sought for.

It may here be observed, that in the wardrobe accounts of Edward I, there is an item, of money paid for the use of the king for playing at the Four Kings—Quatuor Reges—and that it has been conjectured that the game was cards. The Hon. Daines Barrington, who appears to have been of this opinion, says: "the earliest mention of cards that I have yet stumbled upon is in Mr. Anstis's History of the Garter, where he cites the following passage from the Wardrobe Rolls, in the sixth year of Edward the First, [1278]: 'Waltero Sturton, ad opus regis ad ludendum ad quatuor reges viiis. vd.' From which entry Mr. Anstis with some probability conjectures, that playing cards were not unknown at the latter end of the thirteenth century; and perhaps what I shall add may carry with it some small confirmation of what he supposes." [26] As this is not the place to discuss the question, if playing cards were known in England so early as the reign of Edward I, it may be sufficient to remark that the substance of what Mr. Barrington has adduced in confirmation of Anstis's conjecture consists in a statement of the fact of Edward having been in Syria, and that he might have learned the game of cards there [27] —taking it for granted that cards were of Eastern invention, and known in Syria at that period,—and in a second-hand reference to Breitkopf for a passage in the Güldin Spil, wherein it is stated that a certain game—cards being unquestionably meant—first came into Germany about the year 1300.

From Sir William Jones's account of the game of Chaturanga or, more specifically, chaturaji—the Four Rajas, or Kings—there can scarcely be a doubt that the game of the Four Kings played at by Edward I, was chess, and that this name was a literal translation of the Indian one. Assuming this, then, as an established fact, we have evidence of the number four being associated in Europe at that period with the game of chess, which, as has been previously shown, bore so great a resemblance to a game of cards.

Now, whatever may have been the origin of the name of cards, it is undeniable that the idea of the number four is very generally associated with them; there are four suits, and in each suit there are four honours, reckoning the ace;—to say nothing of the very old game of All Fours, which may have originally meant winning in each of the four Angas or divisions, now represented by High, Low, Jack, and the Game. It is also certain that, in this country, cards were called the Books of the Four Kings, long before the passage relating to the game of Quatuor Reges, which might have suggested the name, appeared in Anstis's History of the Garter. They are so called by Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his translation of Rabelais, in chapter 22, book i, which contains an account of the games that Gargantua played at: "After supper, were brought into the room the fair wooden gospels, and the books of the Four Kings, that is to say, the tables and cards." [28] Cards are not indeed called the Books of the Four Kings in the original text of Rabelais; though it is certain that they were known in France by that name, and that the Valets or Knaves were also called fous—a term which, as Peignot remarks, corroborates Breitkopf's theory of the analogy between chess and cards. [29] Mrs. Piozzi, speaking of cards, in her Retrospection, published in 1801, says, "It is a well-known vulgarity in England to say, 'Come, Sir, will you have a stroke at the history of the Four Kings?' meaning, Will you play a game at cards?" A writer in Fraser's Magazine, for August, 1844, also calls cards the books of the Four Kings, as if they were well known by that name.

Now as chahar, chatur, or, as the word is sometimes written in English, chartah, signifies four in the Hindostanee language, as it enters into the composition of chaturanga, and as chess probably suggested the game of cards, I am inclined to think that both games were invented in Hindostan, and that chahar or chatur in the language of that country formed a portion of the original name of cards. The common term for cards in Hindostan, is Taj or Tas; and its primary meaning, as I am informed, is a leaf, folium. But as it is also used in a figurative sense to signify a diadem or crown, and as the term signifying a crown is frequently used in most languages to signify regal authority, the compound term chahar-taj, or chahar-tas, would be suggestive of nearly the same idea as "the Four Kings," and be almost identical in sound with the Latin chartæ or chartas. The name, whatever it might be, would be liable to change in passing from Hindostan, through other countries, into Europe; in the same manner as we find Chaturanga, the Sanscrit name of chess, transformed into the Persian Chatrang, the Arabic Shatranj, the Greek Zatrikion, the Spanish Axedrez, the Italian Scacchi, the German Schach, the French Echecs, and the English Chess.

The name given to cards by the earliest French and German writers who mention them, is, respectively, Cartes and Karten—in Latin, Chartæ; but as Charta signifies paper, and as cards are made of paper, it has generally been supposed that they received their name from that circumstance. But if a part of their original name signified the number four, whether derived from an eastern root, or from the Latin quarta, it can scarcely be doubted that they acquired the name of chartæ, not in consequence of their being made of paper, but because the Latin word which signified paper had nearly the same sound as another word which signified four,—in the same manner as Pherz, the General, in chess, found a representative in Fierge, and subsequently became confounded with Vierge: the ideal change of Vierge into Dame, the wife of the king, followed of course, like "wooed,—an' married an' a'."

It is deserving of remark, that in several old French works, written within fifty years of the time when we have positive evidence of the game of cards being known in France, the word is sometimes spelled quartz or quartes, as if, in the mind of the writer, it was rather associated with the idea of four than with that of paper. The possible derivation of cards from quarta, was suggested by Mr. Gough, in his Observations on the Invention of Cards, in the eighth volume of the 'Archæologia,' though he was of opinion that they obtained their name from the paper of which they were made. "Perhaps," says he, "it may be too bold a conjecture that the 'quartes, ludus quartarum sive cartarum,' by which Junius [in his Etymologicon] explains cards, may be derived from quarta, which, Du Cange says, is used simply for the fourth part of any thing, and so may be referred to the quatuor reges; but as Du Cange expressly says, that quarta and carta are synonymous, I lay no stress on this, but leave it to the critics."

To carry still further this speculation on the Indian origin of Playing Cards,—both name and thing,—it is to be observed that cards are called Naibi, by the earliest Italian writers who mention them; and that they have always been called Naypes, or Naipes, in Spain, since the time of their first introduction into that country. Now in Hindostan, where we find the word Chahar, Chatur, or Chartah, they have also the word Na-eeb, or Naib, which, judging from the sound only, appears at least as likely to have been the original of naibi and naipe, as it is of the English Nabob. [30] This word Na-eeb signifies a viceroy, lieutenant, or deputy, who rules over a certain district, as a feudatory who owes allegiance to a sovereign. Now, as the game of chess was known in Hindostan by the name of the Four Kings, if cards were suggested by chess, and invented in the same country, the supposition that they might have been called Chatur-Nawaub—the Four Viceroys, as the cognate game of chess was called the Four Kings—and that this name subsequently became changed into Chartah-Naib, is, at least, as probable as the derivation of Naipes from N.P., the initials of Nicolas Pepin, their supposed inventor. Though this last etymology has very much the appearance of a conundrum, propounded in jest for the purpose of ridiculing a certain class of etymologists who always seek for roots at the surface, it is nevertheless that which received the sanction of the royal Spanish Academy, and which is given in their Dictionary. [31] Several Spanish writers, however, of high reputation for their knowledge of the formation of their native language, have decidedly asserted that the word Naipes, signifying cards, whatever it might have originally meant, was derived from the Arabic; and if the testimony of Covelluzzo, a writer quoted in Bussi's History of the City of Viterbo, could be relied on, the question respecting the word Naibi or Naipes, and cards themselves, having been brought into Europe through the Arabs, would appear to be determined. His words are: "Anno 1379, fu recato in Viterbo el Gioco delle Carte, che venne de Seracinia, e chiamisi tra loro Naib." [32] That is, "In the year 1379, was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called Naib." It may be observed, that the very word here given as the Arabic name for cards still signifies in Arabia a deputy of the Sultan. Even though it may not be a word of Hindostanee origin, it may have been introduced into that language when a great portion of Hindostan was subjected to the Mahometan yoke, and when many of the Rajahs of native race were superseded by the Naibs or deputies of a Mahometan sovereign. [33] There appears reason to believe that the word Naipe or Naipes, as applied to cards, did not primarily signify cards generally, but was rather a designation of the game played with cards; in the same manner as "the Four Kings" signified the game at cards, in consequence of a king being the chief of each of the four suits. In Vieyra's Portuguese Dictionary, 1773, one of the explanations of the word "Naipe" is, "a Suit of Cards;" and the phrase, "Náo tenho nenhuma daquelle naipe," is translated, "I have none of that suit."

It is not unlikely that the Greek word χαρτης,—Latin, Charta, paper,—was derived from the East, and that it was originally associated with the idea of "four," as expressive of a square—quarré—of paper, in contra-distinction to a long strip of paper or parchment, which, when rolled up, formed an ενειλεμα, or volume. In middle-age Greek, the word χαρταριον, or χαρτιον, [34]—which is unquestionably derived from the same root as χαρτης,—appears to have been used to convey the idea of a square, or four-sided piece of wood, and to have specifically signified a square wooden trencher: the top of the trencher-cap worn at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and at some of our public schools, may be considered as a representative of the general form of the thing. It is curious to trace how a word primarily expressive of the number four has, in Greek, Latin, French, and English, been employed to signify either paper generally, or a portion of paper. From the French Cahier or cayer [35] —which may be traced through carré or quarré, to the Latin quartus, from quatuor—we have the old English quair, a little paper book consisting of a few sheets; and the modern quire, now signifying a definite number of sheets of paper.

In Hindostanee the word chit signifies, I believe, a note or letter, and is in this sense synonymous with the Latin Epistola, and the German Briefe. Should it also signify paper, [36] either in general, or of a particular kind, and be cognate with chahar, chatur, or chartah, [37]—"four,"—* the preceding speculations on the primary meaning of χαρτης, charta, and cards, will be materially corroborated. I leave, however, the investigation of this point to those who understand the Hindostanee language, as all the knowledge that I have of the word in question, is derived from one of Theodore Hook's tales, Passion and Principle, in the first series of 'Sayings and Doings.' Wherever he might have picked it up, the effect with which he uses it is peculiarly his own.

Breitkopf, who is decidedly of opinion that cards are of Eastern invention, and of great antiquity, considers that the name Naibe, or Naipes, by which they were first known to the Italians and the Spaniards, is derived from an Arabic word—Nabaa—signifying divination, foretelling future events, fortune-telling, and such like. In this opinion he says he is confirmed by the exposition of the Hebrew word Naibes, which he seems to think cognate with the Arabic Nabaa. [38] He, however, produces no evidence to show that cards were known either to the Arabians or the Jews by the name of Naibe, and from a subsequent passage in his work, it is evident that the conjecture was suggested merely from the circumstance of cards being occasionally employed for the purposes of fortune-telling.

Heineken, who contends that cards were invented in Germany, alleges the name—Briefe—given to them in that country in support of the presumed fact. "Playing Cards," he observes, "were called with us Briefe, that is letters, in Latin, Epistolæ, and they are called so still. The common people do not say, 'give me a pack of cards,' but 'a Spiel Briefe' (un jeu de lettres); and they do not say 'I want a card,' but 'I want a Brief' (a letter). We should, at least, have preserved the name cards, if they had come to us from France; for the common people always preserve the names of all games that come from other countries." [39] This argument is contradicted by the fact of cards having been called Karten in Germany, before they acquired there the name of Briefe; and this very word Briefe, which is merely a translation of the Latin Chartæ, is presumptive evidence of the Germans having obtained their knowledge of cards from either the French or the Italians, with whom the name cards, when "done" into Latin, had the same meaning as the German word Briefe.

With respect to the term Naibes, or Naipes, there are two etymologies which seem deserving of notice here; the one propounded by Bullet, in his 'Recherches Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer;' and the other by Eloi Johanneau, in his 'Mélanges d'Origines Etymologiques.' Mons. Bullet thinks that cards are of French origin, and that they were not invented before the introduction of linen paper,—his chief reason for fixing this epoch as a ne-plus-ultra being evidently founded on their Latinised name, chartæ. From France he supposes that they passed into Spain by way of Biscay, and acquired in their passage the name of Naipes. This word, according to Mons. Bullet, is derived from the Basque term napa, signifying "plat, plain, uni," which very properly designates cards, and corresponds with the Latin charta. This etymology is fanciful rather than felicitous; if charta were synonymous with mensa,—a table,—the Basque term napa would appear to correspond more nearly with it. But the Basque language, like the Celtic, is one peculiarly adapted for etymological speculation; a person who understands a little of it, may readily grub up in its wild fertility a root for any word which he may not be able to supply with a radical elsewhere. [40]

Mons. Eloi Johanneau is of opinion that cards are of much higher antiquity than they are generally supposed to be; and with respect to their Spanish name, Naipes, the origin of it, is, to him, too plain and simple to require the aid of any scarce or voluminous works to prove it; it is, in short, one of those truths which, to be perceived, requires only to be enounced. This incontestable truth is, that the word naipe, a card, comes from the Latin mappa, the m being merely changed into an n. Of this antithesis, or change of a letter, several examples are produced; as the French nappe, a table-cloth, also from mappa; nefle and neflier from mespilum and mespilus; and faire la Sainte Mitouche, for faire la Sainte Nitouche. Then naipe and mappa have an analogous meaning. Naipes, Playing Cards, scarcely differ from a map,—which is a geographic card,—or, except in point of size, from a nappe, which is spread like a chart on the table. In ancient times, too, mappa signified the tessara, or signal, which was displayed at the games of the circus. Tertullian, speaking of those games in his 'Diatribe De Spectaculis,' says: "Non vident missum quid sit. Mappam putant; sed est diaboli ab alto præcipitati gula,"—"They perceive not what is displayed. They think it the mappa, but it is the jaws of the devil." It is evident from this, that in Tertullian's estimation, there was something very wicked in the mappa; and the bad odour which, even at that early period, the word was in, appears to have been retained by its presumed derivative, naipes, ever since: Servavit odorem diu. But then for the grand discovery: Mons. Johanneau finds, in Ducange's Glossary, a passage cited from Papias, a lexicographer of the eleventh century, which proves that the word mappa then signified a Playing Card, and that the game of cards was known at least three centuries previous to the period assigned to its invention by the Abbé Rive. [41] "Mappa," according to Papias, "is a napkin; a picture, or representation of games, is also called mapa; whence we say mapa mundi,"—a map of the world. An ancient Latin and French glossary, also cited by Ducange, explains the passage from Papias to the following effect: "Mapamundi, a mapemunde (or geographic map); and it is derived from mapa, a nappe, a picture or representation of games." [42] Though it may be admitted that nappe, a table-cloth, or napkin, is derived from mappa, and that the latter word was sometimes used to signify a picture of some kind of game; it yet does not appear to be incontrovertibly true, either that mappa, as explained by Papias, signified a card, or a game of cards, or that the word naipes was derived from it. What Mons. Johanneau considers to be a self-evident truth, appears in reality to be no better than one of those confident assertions entitled, by courtesy, moral truths, in consequence of the sincerity of the author's belief. A great many truths of this kind pass current in the business of life, and maintain their nominal value, long after their real character is known, upon the credit of the indorsers.

Wherever cards may have been first invented, and whatever may be the etymology of the words chartæ and naipes, or naibi, it is certain that cards are now well known in Hindostan, where they form the amusement of the natives, both Hindoos and Moslems. That they were invented there, may be a matter of dispute; but that they have been known there from an early period, and were not introduced there from Europe, appears to be undeniable. The Hindoo cards are usually circular; the number of suits is eight, and in some packs ten; and the marks of the suits, though in some instances showing an agreement with those of European cards, are evidently such as are peculiar to the country, and identified with the customs, manners, and opinions of the people. They coincide with the earliest European cards in having no queen, the two coat cards—being a king and his principal minister or attendant—and in the suits being distinguished by the colour as well as by the form of the mark or emblem.

It appears necessary here to notice an objection, which readily suggests itself to the supposed derivation of chartæ, cards, from a word of eastern origin, signifying "four." It is this: if the ancient Hindoo pack consisted of eight or even ten suits, would it not be preposterous to derive the European name from a word which implies that there were only four. Facts most assuredly are stubborn things, and no speculation, whether lame of a leg, or going smoothly on "all fours," can stand against them. It is not, however, proved that the most ancient Hindoo cards consisted of eight or ten suits; and till this be done, the speculation must just pass for what it is worth. Whether there were eight, ten, or twenty suits, the derivation of χαρτης, charta, paper, from a word of Eastern origin, would still be unaffected. If the game of cards were suggested by that of chess, I am inclined to think that the earliest pack would consist of only two suits, and that more were subsequently added to satisfy the wants of "busy idleness," for a more complicated game. Be this as it may, cards did not arrive at Europe from Hindostan "per saltum;" it is probable that their progress through the intervening countries was comparatively slow; and even if they left home with a "suite" of eight, it is not impossible that they might lose half of them by the way. But, to meet the objection by a fact: from a description of a pack of Hindostanee cards to be subsequently noticed, and of the game played with them, it appears that the eight suits are not considered as a single series, but as two divisions of four suits each. [43] This partition corroborates both the theory of the game of cards being suggested by that of chess, and of the name being derived from a word primarily signifying the number four.

On the supposition, then, that cards were invented in the East, it seems advisable to first give some account of the cards now used in Hindustan, before entering into any investigation of the period when the game was first brought into Europe. A high antiquity, indeed, no less than a thousand years, is claimed for one of the packs subsequently described; but rejecting t as a pure fiction, which the apparent newness of the cards themselves contradicts, it may be fairly assumed, seeing that in the East customs are slowly changed, that the figures and symbols, or marks, on those cards are, in their forms and signification generally, of at least as early a date as those which are to be found on the oldest European cards.

There is no collection of Hindostanee cards in the Museum of the East India Company; the purveyors, it would seem, not considering them likely to be interesting even to the Lady Proprietors, who, though they have no voice, at least in Leadenhall Street, yet have considerable influence, by their votes, in the choice of Directors. The natives of Hindustan always speak of "the Company" as if, in the abstract, the great body of proprietors were a female,—"Mrs. Company;" [44] and it would appear that the "direction" of things at home, is rapidly approximating to a pure Gynecocracy. [45]

In the Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society, there are three packs of Hindostanee cards, one of them consisting of ten suits, and the other two of eight suits each. In each suit, when complete, the number of cards is twelve; that is two coat cards, or honours, and ten others, whose numerical value is expressed by the number of marks upon them, in a mode similar to that by which English cards, from the ace to the ten, are distinguished by the number of the "pips." The cards of all the packs are circular; the diameter of the largest is 2-3/4 inches, and of the smallest about 2-1/8 inches. The material of which they are formed would appear to be canvas, [46] but so stiffened with varnish, that each single card feels like a piece of wood. All the figures and marks appear to be executed by hand, not printed nor stencilled; each pack is contained in an oblong box, the cards being placed on their edges; and on the top and sides of the box, the marks or emblems of the several suits are depicted. From the style of their execution, I should conclude that card-painting in Hindostan, was a regular profession, though possibly combined with some other, to "make ends meet," just as card-painting was combined with wood-engraving generally, in Germany in the latter part of the fifteenth century; or just as shaving and hair-cutting might, in former times, afford a decent subsistence when eked out with a little surgery, such as blood-letting, tooth-drawing,—"Quæ prosunt omnibus artes."

In giving a separate description of each of those packs, it seems most proper to begin with that for which the highest antiquity is claimed. This pack is one of the two which consist of eight suits; and, from a memorandum which accompanies it, I have obtained the following particulars respecting a former possessor and the presumed antiquity of the cards. They formerly belonged to Captain D. Cromline Smith, to whom they were presented, about the year 1815, by a high-caste Bramin, who dwelt at Guntoor, or some other place in one of the northern Sircars of Southern India. The Bramin considered them to be a great curiosity, and informed Capt. Smith that they had been handed down in his family from time immemorial. He supposed that they were a thousand years old, or more; he did not know if they were perfect, but believed that originally there were two more colours or suits. He said they were not the same as the modern cards; that none knew how to play at them; and that no books give any account of them. Such is the sum of the Bramin's information. The writer of the memorandum,—looking at the costume of the figures and the harness of the animals, and considering that the Mahometans do not tolerate painted images, [47] —concludes that these cards are Hindostanee.

The pack consists of eight suits, each suit containing two honours and ten common cards—in all ninety-six cards. In all the suits the King is mounted on an elephant; and in six, the Vizier, or second honour, is on horseback; but in the blue suit,—the emblem or mark of which is a red spot with a yellow centre—he rides a tiger; and in the white suit,—the mark of which appears like a grotesque or fiendish head,—he is mounted on a bull. The backs of all the cards are green. The following are the colours of the ground on which the figures are painted in the several suits, together with the different marks by which the suits and the respective value of the common cards were also distinguished.

On every one of the common cards there is also depicted, in addition to the mark of their respective suits, something like a slender leaf, tapering upwards, but with the top curving down. Of this pack of cards I have nothing further to observe here than that if they are even a hundred years old, they must have been preserved with great care; and that I am inclined to think that the Bramin, who gave them to Capt. Smith, had over-rated their antiquity and rarity in order to enhance the value of his present.

In a second pack, consisting, like the preceding, of eight suits of twelve cards each, the King appears seated on a throne; while the Vizier, as in the former, is on horseback, except in three of the suits where he appears mounted on an elephant, a single-humped camel, and a bull. Though there be a difference between this pack and the former, in the marks of some of the suits, there can be no doubt that the same game might be played with each. In the pack now under consideration the backs of all the cards are red. The following are the colours of the ground and the marks of the several suits.

The third pack of Hindostanee cards in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, to whom it was presented by the late Sir John Malcolm, is much more curious and interesting than either of the other two previously noticed. It consists of ten suits, of twelve cards each; and the marks of the suits are the emblems of the ten Avatars, or incarnations of Vichnou, one of the three principal divinities in the religious system of the Hindoos. The King is represented by Vichnou, seated on a throne, and in one or two instances accompanied by a female; and the Vizier, as in most of the suits of the other two packs, is mounted on a white horse. In every suit two attendants appear waiting on the second as well as on the principal "honour." The backs of all the cards in this pack are red; and the colours of the ground and marks of the several suits are as follows:— [48]

The following description of the ten Avatars, or incarnations, of Vichnou, as represented in a series of drawings, [49] will explain the meaning of nearly every one of the marks of the ten suits of cards. The only suits which do not exactly correspond with the Avatars, as represented in the drawings, are those numbered 8 and 9, the emblems of which are a goat and an umbrella. It is, however, to be observed that Hindoo authors do not agree in their accounts of the different Avatars of Vichnou, though they generally concur in representing them as ten in number, that is, nine passed and one to come. It is also possible that the goat—which appears couchant as if giving suck—and the umbrella, which in the east is frequently the sign of regal dignity, may be symbolical of the eighth and ninth Avatars in the description of the drawings. Though the Bramin Dwarf, in the fifth Avatar of the drawings, carries an umbrella, there can scarcely be a doubt that the Man's head, in No. 5 of the cards, is the symbol of this Avatar.

THE TEN AVATARS OF VICHNOU.

1. Matsyavatara. The first Avatar of Vichnou, as a Fish; represented as the body of a man with the tail of a fish. The human part is coloured blue; the rest is white. In two of his four hands he holds the Chakra, or Soudarsana, which here appears something like a quoit with rays proceeding from it. [50] In the palm of another of his hands the diamond—carré mystique—is displayed. According to the Bhagavat Purana, the precious stone or diamond called Castrala, is a sort of talisman which illuminates all things, and in which all things are reflected. It is the perfect mirror of the world, and Vichnou generally wears it on his breast, or holds it in the palm of that hand which is raised in the act of benediction.

2. Kourmavatara. The second Avatar, as a Tortoise; the upper part of the figure, man, the lower, tortoise. The Chakra appears poised on the fingers of one of the hands.

3. Varahavatara. The third Avatar of Vichnou, as a Verrat, or wild boar, to destroy the giant Hiranyakcha. Vichnou appears with the head of a boar, but with the body and limbs of a man. In the cards, the head of the boar is blue.

4. Narasinhavatara. The fourth Avatar of Vichnou, as a Lion, to destroy the giant Hiranycasyapa. Vichnou appears with a lion's head, but with a human body, holding the Chakra in one of his hands.

5. Vamanavatara. The fifth Avatar of Vichnou, as a Bramin Dwarf, to avenge the gods on the giant Bali. In one hand he holds a kind of narrow-necked pot, with a spout to it, and in another a cattashal, or umbrella.

6. Parasou-Rama. The sixth Avatar of Vichnou, as a Bramin, armed with an axe, to chastise kings and warriors. The colour of the figure is green, and in one of his hands he holds either a flower, or a kind of leaf.

7. Sri-Rama, or Rama-Ichandra. The seventh Avatar of Vichnou, in the family of the Kings of the race of the Sun, to avenge the gods and men of the tyranny of Ravana, King of Lanka or Ceylon. The figure of Vichnou in this Avatar, is blue or green; and he is seated on a couch or throne with his wife Sita beside him, while monkeys appear offering him adoration. In the cards, the colour of Vichnou is blue, and a female shares his throne, which is very much like a font or shallow bath. Monkeys also appear before him.

8. Chrishna. The Eighth Avatar of Vichnou, as an Infant suckled by his mother Devaki. Rays of glory surround the heads of the mother and child.

9. Bouddha, the Son of Maya. The ninth Avatar of Vichnou, who appears richly dressed, seated in an attitude of meditation on a throne, the back of which is of a shell-like form—"espèce de conque"—and is adorned with Lotus flowers.

10. Calki-avatara. The tenth, and future Avatar of Vichnou, as a Horse, or Man-horse, armed with sword and buckler, to destroy the world at the end of the present age. The figure has a human body, and a horse's head.

As there are different accounts of the incarnations of Vichnou, as has been previously observed, the following is given with the view of throwing a little more light on the subject: "Vichnou, the second person in the Hindoo trinity, is said to have undergone nine successive incarnations to deliver mankind from so many perilous situations. The first, they say, was in the form of a lion; the second of a hog; the third a tortoise; the fourth a serpent; the fifth that of a Bramin (a dwarf, a foot and a half high); the sixth a monster, namely, half man half lion; the seventh a dragon; the eighth a man born of a virgin; and the ninth an ape. Bernier adds a tenth, which is to be that of a great cavalier. (Voyage, vol. ii, p. 142.) A very particular and a very different account of these transformations is given by Mr. Sonnerat (Voyages, vol. i, p. 158), with curious representation of each of them." [51] In this account we have both a lion, and a man-lion, which are probably symbols of the same Avatar; and a dragon and a serpent, also probably symbols of the same thing, though neither of them occur in the cards, nor in the description of the drawings.

I shall now present the reader with a description of another pack of Hindostanee cards, and of the game played with them: it forms an article entitled 'Hindostanee Cards,' in the second volume of the Calcutta Magazine, 1815; and is accompanied with two plates, fac-similes of which are here given.

"The words Gunjeefu and Tas are used in Hindostanee to denote either the game, or a pack of cards. I have in vain searched the 'Asiatic Researches,' 'Asiatic Annual Register,' Sir William Ouseley's 'Oriental Collections,' and the 'Oriental Repertory,' by Dalrymple, for some account or description of the mode of playing the cards in use among the natives of Hindostan; and further, from the total silence of the French and English Encyclopædias, conclude that they have never engaged the attention of any inquirer. A description of the gunjeefu, or cards, used by the Moslems, may therefore be acceptable to our readers.

"In the 'Dictionary, Hindostanee and English,' edited by the late Dr. Hunter, the names of the eight suits are to be found under the word Taj, the name of the first suit.

"The pack is composed of ninety-six cards, divided into eight suits. In each suit are two court cards, the King, and the Wuzeer. The common cards, like those of Europe, bear the spots from which the suits are named, and are ten in number.

"Four suits are named superior, [52] and four the inferior [53] suits.

SUPERIOR SUITS.

• Taj. [54]
• Soofed.
• Shumsher.
• Gholam.

INFERIOR SUITS.

• Chung.
• Soorkh.
• Burat.
• Quimash.

Plate I.

Plate II.

"Plate I represents the [honours of the] four superior suits, called Beshbur; and Plate II, the inferior, Kumbur. The kings are easily distinguished, and are here numbered from 1 to 8.

"In the superior suits, the ten follows next in value to the king and wuzeer; and the ace is the lowest card. In the inferior suits, the ace has precedence immediately after the wuzeer, then the deuce, and others in succession, the ten being of least value.

"The game is played by three or six persons: when six play, three take the superior, and three the inferior suits. The pack being divided into parcels after the cards are well mixed, the players cut for the deal; and he who cuts the highest card deals. [55] When three play, the cards are dealt by fours. In the first and last round the cards are exposed, and thus eight cards of each person's hand are known to the adversaries. The cards are dealt from right to left, the reverse of the European mode.

"The Lead. When the game is played by day, he who holds the red king, (Soorkh, the sun,) must lead that and any small card. Should he play the king alone, it is seized by the next player. The adversaries throw down each two common cards, and the trick is taken up. When the game is played by night, the white king, (Soofed, the moon,) is led in like manner. The cards are then played out at the option of him who leads, the adversaries throwing away their small cards, and no attention is paid to the following suit, unless when one of the adversaries, having a superior card of the suit led, chooses to play it to gain the trick.

"In order to guard a second-rate card which may enable you hereafter to recover the lead, it is customary to throw down a small one of that suit, and call the card you are desirous to have played. With this call the adversaries must comply. As in Whist, when the person who has the lead holds none but winning cards, they are thrown down. After the cards have been all played, the parties shuffle their tricks, and the last winner, drawing a card, challenges one of his adversaries to draw out any card from the heap before him, naming it the fourth or fifth, &c. from the top or bottom. The winner of this trick in like manner challenges his right-hand adversary. The number of cards in the possession of each party is then counted, and those who have fewest are obliged to purchase from an adversary to make up their deficiency of complement. The greatest winner at the end of four rounds has the game.

"The following terms used in the game may be acceptable to those who desire to understand it when played by natives: I think they unequivocally prove that Gunjeefu is of Persian or Arabian origin.

• "Zubur-dust, the right-hand player.
• Zer-dust, the left-hand player.
• Zurb, a trick.
• Ser, a challenge.
• Ser-k'hel, the challenging game.
• Ekloo, a sequence of three cards.
• Khurch, the card played to one led; not a winning card.
• K´hel java, to lay down the winning card at the end of a deal.
• Chor, the cards won at the end of a deal; the sweep.
• Ghulutee, a misdeal.
• Wuruq, a card.
• Durhum-kurna, to shuffle.
• Wuruq-turashna, to cut the cards.

"From my observation of the game when played, I do not think it sufficiently interesting to cause its being preferred by Europeans to the cards in vogue in Europe. The number of the suits are too great, and the inconvenient form of the cards (the size and shape of which are represented by the plates [56]) are great objections. The Hindoostanee cards are made of paper, well varnished; the figures appropriately painted, and the ground and backs of every suit of one colour. The Slave standing before the King in No. 3, is the figure used as the spot or crest on all the common cards of that suit.... The tradition regarding the origin of the Hindoostanee cards is, that they were invented by a favorite sultana, or queen, to wean her husband from a bad habit he had acquired of pulling or eradicating his beard."

With respect to the word Gunjeefu, which, according to the preceding account, appears to be a general name for cards, I am informed that it is of Persian origin, and that it signifies both a pack of cards and the game. In Bengal, cards are more generally known by the name of Tas, which is a Hindoo word, than that by Gunjeefu, or Gangēefah, as it is otherwise written. From the reference, in the preceding account, to the 'Dictionary, Hindoostanee and English,' edited by the late Dr. Hunter, [57] I am inclined to think that Taj and Tas have the same signification, with reference to cards; and that the only difference between them consists in the pronunciation and mode of spelling. Now, the word Taj is said to signify a crown; but if it be also used figuratively for a king, the wearer of a crown—just as "crown" is figuratively used to signify empire or regal power—the Hindoo name for cards would be synonymous with "Kings." That cards were known in England by the name of the "Four Kings" has been already shown; and if my speculations on the terms Chartæ and Naipes be correct, it was by a name originally signifying four kings, or four viceroys, that cards were first known in Europe.

With regard to the game described in the preceding account, it appears to bear some resemblance to that which the French call "l'Ombre à trois,"—three-handed Ombre. [58] In both games the suits appear to be considered as ranged in two divisions: in the Hindostanee game, as the Red and the White; and in the European, as the Red and the Black. In the Hindostanee game there are eight suits, and six or three players; and when three play, the cards are dealt by fours. In the European game of four suits and forty cards—the tens, nines, and eights being omitted—there are three players, and the cards are dealt by threes. A person who can play at Ombre will scarcely fail to perceive several other points of similarity between the two games. From the terms used in the game of Ombre—Spadillo, Basto, Matador, Punto, &c.—there can scarcely be a doubt that the other nations of Western Europe derived their knowledge of it from the Spaniards. The Hon. Daines Barrington, in his 'Observations on the Antiquity of Card Playing in England,' derives the names of the game from the Spanish, "hombre," a man; and there is reason to believe that it was one of the oldest games at cards played at in Europe. If the game of cards were introduced into Europe by the Arabs, it is in Spain that we might first expect to find them. Pietro della Valle, in his Travels in the East, between 1614 and 1626, speaks of the people playing at cards, though differing from ours in the figures and number of suits; and Niebuhr, in his Travels, also speaks of the Arabians playing at cards, and says that the game is called Lab-el-Kammer. [59] It is, however, to be observed, that the game of cards is not once mentioned in the Arabian Nights; and from this silence it may be concluded that at the time when those tales were compiled card-playing was not a popular pastime in Arabia. The compilation, it is believed, is not earlier than about the end of the fifteenth century, though many of the tales are of a much higher antiquity.

Leaving out of consideration the pack of ten suits, with the emblems of the ten incarnations of Vichnou, as being of a mythological character, and probably not in common use for the purposes of gaming, it is evident from the other three packs, of eight suits each, that the cards known in Hindostan are not uniform in the marks of the different suits, though it is obvious that any game,—depending on sequences and the conventional value of the several cards,—which can be played with one of the packs, may be also played with either of the other two. The difference in the marks is, indeed, much less than is to be observed in old French, Spanish, and German cards, which present so many differences as to render it impossible to derive them from one original type. The mere mark or emblem, whatever it might originally signify, appears to have had no specific meaning or value, beyond what might be assigned to it by the conventional rules of the game; whether it were a sword or a chalice, a club or a piece of money, a heart or a diamond, a green leaf or a hawk's bell, in playing and counting the game, it was a "pip," and nothing more.

Whether the two packs of eight suits each, in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, are considered by the natives of Hindostan as consisting of two divisions of four suits each, as in the pack described in the extract from the 'Calcutta Magazine,' I have not been able to ascertain. In all the three packs the sword is to be found as the mark of one of the suits; and the soofed and soorkh of the one pack—silver coin and gold coin, figuratively the moon and the sun—I consider to be represented by the circular marks in the other two; and the oval in these is not unlike the mark of the suit named Quimash—merchandise—in the former. The mark of the suit Burat, see Plate II, No. 7—which is said to mean a royal diploma or assignment, corresponds very nearly with a parallelogram containing dots, as if meant for writing, in the pack formerly belonging to Capt. D. Cromline Smith; but though a parallelogram—crossed by two lines, and with the longest side vertical—also occurs in the other pack, its agreement with the Burat is by no means so apparent. The marks of the suits Taj, a Crown, and Chung, a Harp. [60] (see Plate I, fig. 1, and Plate II, fig. 5,) I am unable to recognise, either by name or figure, in the other two packs; though I am inclined to think that, in one of them, the place of the Taj is supplied by a kind of fruit, and in the other by a flower. It will be observed that, in the plate, the mark of the suit called Chung, a harp, is a bird. In the other two packs, the suits which I consider to be the substitutes of the Chung have a mark which I have not been able to make out; but in one of them the Vizier, as in the Chung, is mounted on a single-humped camel. In the suit called Gholam, a slave—Plate I, fig. 4—I cannot make out what is intended for the mark,—whether the Mahut, who appears guiding the elephant, or the kind of mace carried by the Vizier; whatever may be the mark, I consider the suit to be represented by that with a white ground in Capt. D. C. Smith's cards, the mark of which is a grotesque head, as in both suits the Vizier is mounted on a bull. The corresponding suit in the other pack I conceive to be the one which has for its mark a man's head.

With respect to the marks of the several suits, in the different packs of Hindostanee cards, previously described,—what objects they graphically represent, what they might have been intended to signify by the person who devised them, and what allegorical meanings may have assigned to them by others,—much might be said; and a writer of quick imagination, and hieroglyphic wit, like Court de Gebelin, might readily find in them not only a summary of all the knowledge of the Hindoos—theological, moral, political, and scientific—but also a great deal more than they either knew or dreamt of. As I feel my inability to perform such a task, or rather to enjoy such pleasures of imagination; and as the present work does not afford space for so wide a discursus, I shall confine my observations to such marks as appear to have, both in their form and meaning, the greatest affinity with the marks to be found on early European cards. The marks in the pack consisting of ten suits, representing the incarnations of Vichnou, I shall only incidentally refer to, as I am of opinion that those cards are not such as either are or were generally used for the purposes of gaming, but are to be classed with those emblematic cards which have, at different periods, been devised in Europe for the purpose of insinuating knowledge into the minds of ingenious youth by way of pastime.

In referring to any of the marks to be found in the three eight-suit packs of Hindostanee cards, which appear to be intended for the purposes of play only, it seems unnecessary to specify the particular pack to which they belong, as my object is merely to call attention to the apparent agreement between some of the marks of Hindostanee cards, and those which are either known to have been the marks of the earliest European cards, or are to be found on such old cards as are still preserved in public libraries, or in the collections of individuals.

In the early European cards, which have cups, swords, pieces of money, and clubs or maces for the marks of the four suits, [61] the sword and piece of money of the Hindostanee cards are readily identified; and if we are to suppose that in these cards certain emblems of Vichnou were formerly represented—but which are not to be found either on the ordinary Playing Cards, or on those displaying the ten incarnations of Vichnou—it would not be difficult to account for the cups, and clubs or maces; for, according to Dr. Frederick Creutzer, [62] the mace or war club is frequently to be seen in one of the hands of Vichnou; and Count von Hammer-Purgstal remarks, that "the sword, the club, and the cup, are frequent emblems in the Eastern Ritual." [63] As the marks in European suits, cups, or chalices, swords, money, and clubs, have been supposed to represent the four principal classes of men in a European state, to wit, Churchmen; Swordmen, or feudal nobility; Monied men, merchants or traders; and Club-men, workmen, or labourers,—it is just as easy to run a parallel in the four superior suits of one of the packs of Hindostanee cards, given in Plate I; there may be found Taj, a crown, royalty; Soofed, silver money, merchants; Shumsher, a sword, fighting men, seapoys; and Gholam, a slave, the coolies both of hill and plain. It may not be unnecessary here to observe that the four great historical castes of the Hindoos are, 1, Bramins, priests; 2, Chetryas, soldiers; 3, Vaisyas, tradesmen and artificers; and 4, Sudras, slaves, and the lowest class of labourers. Of these four castes the Bramins alone remain unmixed; the other three, as distinct castes, exist only in name, for they have become so intermixed, that the subdivisions can neither be ascertained nor reckoned by the learned pundits themselves. [64]

In the oldest stencilled, or printed, European cards, which are probably of as early a date as the year 1440, the marks of the suits are bells, hearts, leaves, and acorns; and in the Hindostanee cards we find a leaf or a flower, as the mark of one of the suits; and I am inclined to think that, in the latter, the figures of the oval, and of that which appears something like a pineapple in a shallow cup, were the types of the bells and the acorns. When those marks are compared, without reference to their being representations of specific objects of which the mind has already a preconceived idea, the general agreement of their forms is, to the eye, more apparent. For the heart, I have not been able to discover any corresponding mark in the Hindostanee cards. Should I be told that the form of the heart might be suggested by that of the leaf, I have to observe that the form of the leaf in Hindostanee cards, is not the same as that which occurs in European, and that in the latter, the colour of the so-called heart appears always to have been red.

Between the marks of the suits on old French cards,—Cœur, Carreau, Trèfle, and Pique,—and those to be found on Hindostanee cards, I shall not venture to make any direct comparison. It, however, may be observed that the form of the Pique—the spade in English cards—is almost precisely the same as that of the leaf in other European packs; and that the Trèfle—the club, in English cards—in its outline bears a considerable likeness to the acorn. Those who please may derive the Carreau, or diamond, from the Castrala, or mystic diamond, worn on the breast, or held in the palm of the hand of Vichnou; it does not, however, occur as the mark of a suit in any of the Hindostanee cards that have come under my observation; and the mark to which it bears the greatest resemblance is that of the suit Burat, as shown in Plate II, No. 7. An examination of a greater variety of Hindostanee cards, and more extensive knowledge of the names and significations of the marks of the suits, and of the different games played, would probably lead to the discovery of more points of resemblance than I have been able to perceive.

The different things signified by marks, apparently agreeing in their general forms, on Hindostanee and European cards, may be partly accounted for on the following grounds, which will also in some degree serve to explain the difference, both in form and name, of the marks of the suits in different packs of old European cards.

Graphic forms of all kinds, whether symbolic, or positive representations of specific objects, which are readily understood, both in their figurative meaning and direct signification, by the people with whom they originated, are, when brought into a different country without their explanations, often interpreted by that people according to their knowledge and opinions; and forms for which they have no corresponding originals, or which they fail to identify, are referred to objects of similar shape with which they are familiar, and are called by their names. Similar changes in the meaning of symbolic figures also take place with the same people, in consequence of the original meaning becoming obsolete, through change of customs and opinions, in the course of time. In this manner a figure of the horned Isis, with the young Horus in her lap, appears to have been taken for a representation of the Virgin Mary, with the crescent moon on her head, nursing the infant Jesus; and thus the figures of Jupiter and Minerva have passed for those of Adam and Eve. In the sixteenth century it appears that in Italy the suit of Bastoni—clubs, or maces, proper—was also called Colonne, pillars; and the suit of Danari—money—Specchi, mirrors; [65] merely because the club or mace as depicted on the suits, bore some resemblance to a slender pillar, and that the form of Danari, like that of an ancient mirror, was circular. Among the pitmen in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the diamonds on the cards are frequently called Picks, from their similarity to the head of a pick, the tool with which they dig the coals; a writer like Court de Gebelin, might discover in this connexion between picks and "black diamonds" "a type with a pair of handles." It may be here observed, that the suit which the French term piques, is that which we, improperly, call spades.

But, even admitting the agreement, both in figure and signification, of several of the marks of the suits in early European cards, and those which occur in the cards now used in Hindostan, it may be said that this fact by no means proves either that cards were invented in the East, or that the marks of suits on the Hindostanee cards were actually the models of those resembling them which are to be found on early European cards; for cards might find their way into the East from Europe as well as into Europe from the East. When St. Francis Xavier was in the East Indies,—from 1541 to 1552,—card-playing was a common amusement with the European residents and traders; [66] and it is very likely that the first Portuguese ship that arrived there, about half a century before, had a pack of cards on board. That European cards were sent to the East, among other articles of merchandise, towards the end of the sixteenth century, appears evident from a passage in a narrative of the first voyage of the English, on a private account, begun by Captain George Raymond, and finished by Captain James Lancaster; [67] and we learn from Sir Alexander Burnes, that commerce has imported cards into the Holy City of Bokhara, that the pack consists of thirty-six cards, and that the games are strictly Russian. [68]

Looking, however, at all the circumstances,—the probability of Cards having been suggested by Chess, the names Chartæ and Naipes, the marks to be found on them, and the tradition of their having been known in Hindostan from a very early period,—the balance of evidence appears decidedly in favour of the conclusion that cards were invented in the East. The writer of an article on Cards, in No. xlviii of the 'Foreign Quarterly Review,' previously referred to, speaks confidently of the great antiquity of cards in Hindostan, but does not give any authorities for the fact. "We know," he says, "that the Tamuli have had cards from time immemorial; and they are said to be of equal antiquity with the Brahmins, who unquestionably possess them still, and claim to have invented them." The statement of the Bramin who gave the cards to Captain D. Cromline Smith, though certainly not true with respect to that individual pack, may yet be received as confirmatory of the traditional evidence in favour of cards generally having been known in Hindostan from a very early period. [69]

Playing Cards appear to have been known from an early period in China. In the Chinese dictionary, entitled Ching-tsze-tung, compiled by Eul-koung, and first published A.D. 1678, it is said that the cards now known in China as Teen-tsze-pae, or dotted cards, were invented in the reign of Seun-ho, 1120; and that they began to be common in the reign of Kaou-tsung, who ascended the throne in 1131. [70] —According to tradition, they were devised for the amusement of Seun-ho's numerous concubines. M. Abel Remusat, probably on the authority of the Ching-tsze-tung, has also observed that cards were invented by the Chinese in 1120. [71] Mons. Leber, however, considers it to be more likely that they got their first cards from Hindostan; and that, like the Europeans, they merely changed or modified the types, and invented new games.

The general name for cards in China is Che-pae, which literally signifies "paper tickets." At first they are said to have been called Ya-pae, bone or ivory tickets, from the material of which they were made. A pack of dotted cards consists of thirty-two pieces, and the marks—small circular dots of red and black—are placed, alternately, at two of the corners; for instance, in a card containing eight dots, four are placed in one corner and four in the other diagonally opposite to it. Ten of those cards are classed in pairs; the first pair are called Che-tsun,—"the most honorable,"—and are superior to all the others; these may be considered as coat cards, as the one contains the figure of a woman, and the other that of a man; both these cards are also marked with black and red dots,—that of the woman with six, and that of the man with twelve. The second pair are called Tien-pae,—"celestial cards;" each contains twenty-four dots of black and red, corresponding with the twenty-four terms in the Chinese year. The third pair are called Te-pae,—"terrestrial cards;" each contains four red dots corresponding with the four cardinal points of the compass. The fourth pair are called Jin-pae,—"human cards;" each contains sixteen red dots, relating to benevolence, justice, order, and wisdom in a four-fold degree. The fifth pair are called Ho-pae; each card contains eight black dots, relating to a supposed principle of harmony in nature extending itself towards all points of the compass. The remaining twenty-two cards have distinct names, which it is needless here to give: the aggregate of the dots upon them is said to have reference to the number of the stars.

The cards most commonly used in China, are those called Tseen-wan-che-pae,—"a thousand times ten thousand cards." There are thirty cards in a pack; namely, three suits of nine cards each, and three single cards which are superior to all the others. The name of one of the suits is Kew-ko-wan; that is, the nine ten-thousands, or myriads of Kwan—strings of beads, shells, or money. The name of the other suit is Kew-ko-ping,—"nine units of cakes;" and that of the third is Kew-ko-so,—"nine units of chains." The names of the three single cards are, Tseen-wan, a thousand times ten thousand; Hung-hwa, the red flower; and Pih-hwa, the white flower.

No. 1.

No. 2.

No. 3.

No. 4.

No. 5.

No. 6.

In the annexed specimens of Chinese cards, Nos. 1 and 2 are the first and third of the suit of nine myriads of Kwan; Nos. 3 and 4 are the one and the three of the suit of cakes; No. 5 is the one of the suit of chains; and No. 6 is that of the three superior cards, which is called the white flower.

Besides those above described, the Chinese have several other varieties of cards: one pack or set is called Pih-tsze-pae, the hundred boys' cards; another, Tseen-wan-jin-pae,—"a thousand times ten-thousand mens' names cards," containing the names of persons famous in Chinese history; and a third has the same name as Chinese Chess, Keu-ma-paou, chariots, horses, and guns. This latter name corroborates what has been previously said about the probability of the game of cards having been suggested by that of chess.

The marks to be found on Chinese cards scarcely afford a gleam of light by which we might judge of their relation to the cards of other countries: in a pack of such as are chiefly used in Cochin China, I have observed the form of the diamond nearly the same as it appears on English cards; and in a pack of the Chinese cards called Tseen-wan-che-pae, the mark of the suit of Nine Cakes is nearly the same as that of the old Italian Danari, which Galeottus Martius—in his treatise 'De Doctrina promiscua,' written about 1488—considers to have been meant for a loaf.

The cards commonly used in China, are much narrower than ours; an idea of their size may be formed from the specimens given, making allowance for a small margin of white paper all round, but rather wider at the top and bottom than at the sides. The Chinese name for a card, considered singly, or as one of the pieces of a pack or set, appears to be Shen, a fan.

FOOTNOTES:

[ [1] Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive, tom. ii, chap. xii. Des Principes des Sciences et des Arts, disposé en forme de Jeux. Trevoux, 1704.

[2]

Ita vita est hominum quasi cum ludas Tesseris:

Si illud, quod maximè opus est jactu, non cadit,

Illud quod cecidit fortè, id arte ut corrigas.

Terent. Adelph. act. iv, sc. 7.

"Ludo Tesserarum Plato vitam comparavit, in quo et jacere utilia oportet, et jacientem uti benè iis quæ ceciderunt."— Plut. Op. Mor. Epist. ad Paccium.—Etudes historiques sur les Cartes à Jouer, par M. C. Leber, p. 63.

[3] In a paper entitled, l'Origine du Jeu de Piquet, trouvé dans l'Histoire de France sous le règne de Charles VII. Printed in the Mémoires pour l'Histoire des Sciences, &c.—Trévoux; in the vol. for May, 1720, p. 934-968.

[4] In a dissertation "Du Jeu de Tarots, où l'on traite de son origine, où l'on explique ses allégories, et où l'on fait voir qu'il est la source de nos Cartes modernes à jouer," &c. This dissertation is contained in his Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le Monde moderne.—Dissertations mêlées, tom. i, p. 365-394. Paris, 1781. It is not unlikely that he was led to make this discovery from the notices of a philosophic game of the ancient Egyptians, quoted by Meursius, in his treatise De Ludis Græecorum, p. 53. Lugduni Batavorum, 1622. A summary of Court de Gebelin's conceits on the subject of Tarots is to be found in Peignot's Analyse de Recherches sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 227-237.

[5]

He shall have a bell, that's Abel;

And by it standing one whose name is Dee,

In a rug gown; there's D and Rug, that's Drug;

And right anenst him a dog snarling er;

There's Drugger, Abel Drugger. That's his sign.

And here's now Mystery and Hieroglyphic!

The Alchymist, act ii.

[6] See an image of Isis, horned, with the infant Horus on her knee; and note, that antiquaries have not settled why the Virgin Mary is sometimes represented with the crescent on her head. Isis was the protectress of seafaring people; and her image, as we learn from Petronius and other writers, was frequently placed in ships.

[7] The hand occurs frequently in Egyptian hieroglyphics: it would be superfluous to tell the learned reader what it means. The hand holding a hammer, in the hieroglyphic usually known as the Blacksmiths' Coat of Arms, is sufficiently explained by the motto,

"By Hammer and Hand,

All Arts do stand."

[8] Versuch, den Ursprung der Spielkarten, die Einführung des Leinenpapieres, und den Anfang der Holzschneidekunst in Europa zu erforschen. Von J. G. I. Breitkopf. 4to. Leipzig, 1784.

[9] Researches into the History of Playing Cards; with Illustrations of the Origin of Printing and Engraving on Wood. By Samuel Weller Singer. 4to. London, 1816.

[10] Tome deuxième de l'année 1836. 'Origine Française de la Boussole et des Cartes à jouer.' Fragmens d'un ouvrage sous presse, intitulé, 'Histoire du Drapeau, des Couleurs, et des Insignes de la Monarchie Française,' &c. Par M. Rey. Livre X—Universalité des Fleurs de Lis.

[11] Etudes historiques sur les Cartes à jouer. Par M. C. Leber. Originally printed in the sixteenth volume of the 'Mémoires de la Société royale des Antiquaires de France,' and subsequently published separately. Paris, 1842.

[12] "... Ce n'est pas l'affaire de quelques années, ni des travaux, ni des sacrifices d'une seule vie, que de rassembler tant de chétifs débris, de pièces égarées, souillées, mutilées, informes, et dont la découverte n'est plus souvent qu'un caprice du hasard, une bonne fortune plutôt qu'une bonne action. Il faut donc attendre que cette œuvre du temps et de la persévérance soit accomplie."—Etudes Historiques, p. 60.

[13] Catalogue des Livres imprimés, Manuscrits, Estampes, Dessins, et Cartes à jouer, composant le Bibliothèque de M. C. Leber, tom. i, p. 238. Paris, 1839. This library, the Catalogue of which consists of three volumes, now belongs to the city of Rouen. The cards are described in the first volume, pp. 237-48.

[14] With the Latins, Ludere par impar; with the Greeks, αρτιαζειν; ραιζειν, αρτια η περιττα. "Nempe ludentes, sumptis in manu talis, fabis, nucibus, amygdalis, interdum etiam nummis, interrogantes alteram divinare jubebant, 'αρτια η περιττα'; paria, nempe, an imparia haberent."—Meursius, de Ludis Græcorum, p. 5, edit. 1622.

[15] Fortune is a parvenue, in the Olympian circle,—of great means, but no family:

Di chi figluola fusse, ò di che seme

Nascesse, non si sa; ben si sa certo

Ch'infino à Giove sua potentia teme.

Macchiavelli, Capitolo di Fortuna.

[16] Dr. Thomas Hyde is inclined to think that the game of Astragali was known from the time of the general Deluge.—De Ludis Orientalibus. Oxon. 1694.

[17] The ancient Greek game of Astragali or Astragalismus—the Tali of the Romans—appears to have been played in a manner similar to that described in the text. The names given to the different casts are to be found in Meursius, De Ludis Græcorum, under the word ΑΣΤΡΑΓΑΛΙΣΜΟΣ.

[18]

Πεσσοισι προπαροιθε θυραων θυμον ἐτερπον,

Ἡμενοι ἐν ῥινοισι βοων οὑς ἐκτανον ἁυτοι. —Odyss. A. 107.

The word used by Homer, ρεσσοι,—which properly means the pebbles or pieces employed in the game,—is here translated tables; a term, which having now become nearly obsolete as signifying draughts, may be used to denote an ancient cognate game.

It might be plausibly urged by a commentator fond of discovering Homer's covert meanings, that the poet intended to censure the games of Astragalismus and Petteia,—the former as a cause of strife, and the latter as a fitting amusement for idle and dissipated persons, like the suitors of Penelope. In the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 87, Patroclus is represented as having killed, when a boy, though unintentionally, a companion with whom he had quarrelled when playing at Astragali or Tali:

... παιδα κατεκτανον Ἀμφιδαμαντος,

Νηπιος, οὐκ ἐθελων, ἀμφ' ἀστραγαλοισι χολωθεις.

It is not unlikely that an ancient piece of sculpture, in the British Museum,—representing a boy biting the arm of his companion, with whom he has quarrelled at Tali—relates to this passage.

[19] See a work by the late Mr. James Christie—more generally known to the world as an auctioneer than as a man of learning and of great research—entitled "An Enquiry into the ancient Greek game supposed to have been invented by Palamedes antecedent to the Siege of Troy; with Reasons for believing the Game to have been known from remote antiquity in China, and progressively improved into the Chinese, Indian, Persian, and European Chess." London, 1801.

[20] Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. ix, cap. 7.

[21] "As the military groundwork of the game of cards, and its similarity to chess, cannot be denied; so a closer examination of this affinity may readily lead to the origin of the change in their figures and colours."—Breitkopf, Ueber den Ursprung der Spielkarten, s. 30.

[22] "Le traducteur du Poëme de la Vielle, en décrivant les Echecs, s'exprime ainsi;

'La Reyne, que nous nommons Fierge,

Tient de Venus, et n'est pas Vierge;

Aimable est et amoureuse.'" &c.

—L'Origine du Jeu des Echecs, par Mons. Freret. Hist. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. v, p. 255.

[23] "Comme c'est un jeu militaire, il y a dans chaque couleur un roi, un officier supérieur ou capitaine, nommé Ober, et un bas-officier appelé Unter. On appelait encore de nos jours dans l'Empire, où les mots François ne sont pas en vogue, les officiers supérieurs Oberleute, et les bas-officiers Unterleute"—Heineken, Idée Générale d'une Collection d'Estampes, p. 241. Leipsic, 1771.

[24] It would appear that the etymology of this name was a matter of great uncertainty even among people of oriental race. According to some, it was Sad-rengh, the hundred turns, or wiles of the players; according to others, it was Sad-rangi, the hundred vexations of the game. A third derivation was from Shesh-rengh, six colours, as if each of the six orders of pieces had been distinguished by a separate colour.—Hyde, De Ludis Orientalibus. Par. 1. Historia Shahiludii, cap. De Nomine Shatrangi. Oxon. 1694.

[25] That the suits of cards were formerly distinguished by an emblem which was suggestive of a particular colour, as well as representing a particular form, is certain. The Germans still call two of their suits Roth and Grün—red and green—and the emblems are a heart and a leaf.

[26] Observations on the Antiquity of Card-playing in England. In the Archæologia, vol. viii.

[27] "Edward the First, when Prince of Wales, served nearly five years in Syria, and therefore, whilst military operations were suspended, must naturally have wished some sedentary amusement. Now, the Asiatics scarcely ever change their customs: and as they play at cards, though in many respects different from ours, it is not improbable that Edward might have been taught this game, ad quatuor reges, whilst he continued so long in this part of the globe."—Archæol. viii, p. 135.

[28] "Après souper venoient en place les beaulx Evangiles de bois, c'est-à-dire force tabliers, ou le beau flux, ung, deux, trois."—Rabelais, livre i, chap. 22.

[29] The following verses relating to this point are quoted by Peignot, in his Analyse de Recherches sur les Cartes à Jouer, from a poem intituled "La Magdeleine au Désert de la Sainte-Baume en Provence, Poëme spirituel et chrétien, par le P. Pierre de St. Louis, religieux Carme." Lyons, 1668.

"Voila quant à l'église: allons à la maison

Pour voir après cela si ma rime a raison.

Les livres que j'y voy de diverse peinture,

Sont les livres des Roys, non pas de l'Escriture.

J'y remarque au dedans différentes couleurs,

Rouge aux Carreaux, aux Cœurs, noir aux Piques, aux Fleurs;

Avecque ces beaux Roys, je vois encore des Dames,

De ces pauvres maris les ridicules femmes.

Battez, battez les bien, battez, battez les tous,

N'épargnez pas les Roys, les Dames, ni les FOUS."

[30] "The b and v in Persian are constantly used for each other; one instance will suffice—the plural of na-eeb, a viceroy, is equally pronounced nu-vaub and nu-baub, or, according to our pronunciation, nabob."—A Personal Narrative of a Journey from India to England, by Captain the Hon. George Keppel, vol. ii, p. 89. Second edit. 1827.

[31] "Naipe, carton, &c. Tamarid quiere que sea nombre Arabigo, y lo mismo el Brocense; pero comunamente se juzga que se los dio este nombre por la primer cifra que se las puso, que fue una N y una P, con que se significaba el nombre de su inventor, Nicolao Pepin: y de ahi con pequeña corrupcion se dixo Naipe."—Diccionario de la Academia Españolo, edit. 1734.

[32] Istoria della Citta di Viterbo, da Feliciano Bussi, p. 213. Roma, 1743. The passage relating to cards appears to have been first pointed out by Leber, in his Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 43. "Though we have no information respecting the precise date of Covelluzzo's birth or death," says Mons. Leber, in a note at p. 17 of Mons. Duchesne's Précis Historique, "it is yet certain that this chronicler, whose name is properly Giovanni de Juzzo de Covelluzzo, wrote in the fifteenth century, and that what he relates about cards being brought into Viterbo in 1379, was extracted from the chronicle of Nicholas de Covelluzzo, one of his ancestors, who, as well as himself, was an inhabitant of Viterbo, and who possibly might have resided there at the period when cards were first introduced."

[33] Mahmoud, the Gasnevide, first invaded Hindostan in a.d. 999.

[34] "χαρταριον; Gallicum, quartier; scutulum quadratum. Extat. apud Codinum de Offic. aulæ Constantinop. χαρτιον, idem quod χαρταριον."—Meursii Glossarium Græco-Barbarum, 4to, Lugd. Batavor., 1605.—Quartier de bois. A quarter, or square piece of timber.—Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary.

[35] "Cayer. A quire of written paper; a piece of a written book, divided into equal parts."—Cotgrave. The cayer appears to have been synonymous with the pecia of monkish writers. It may be observed that from chartar, a Persian word literally signifying 'four-strings,' the Rev. Stephen Weston has traced the descent of κιθαρα; cithara; chitarra; and guitar. To these derivates the old English gittern may be added."—Specimens of the Conformity of the European Languages, especially the English, with the Oriental languages, especially the Persian. By Stephen Weston, B. D. 12mo, 1802.

[36] It may be here noted that the word Wuruk or Wuruq, used by the Moslems in Hindostan to signify a card, signifies also the leaf of a tree, a leaf of paper, being in the latter sense identical with the Latin folium. See Richardson's Arabic Dictionary, word "Card;" and the word "Wuruq"' in the list of terms used at the game of cards as played at Hindostan, given in a subsequent page.

[37] Should I be told that the correct word for "four" in Hindostanee, is chatur, chatta, or cattah,—not chartah,—and be required to account for the ρ in χαρτης, supposing the latter word to be derived from the same root, I should answer by giving a case in point—the derivation of quartus from quatuor,—leaving others to assign the reason. I subjoin here, by way of contrast, a different etymology of carta—Epistola, a letter. "Quieren algunos que este nombre Castellano, Carta, se derivasse de la ciudad de Carta insigne por aver sido cuna de la reyna Dido, y atribuyen à esta ciudad la etimologia, por aver sido la primera que dio materia en que las Cartas se escriviessen."—Seneca impugnado de Seneca, &c. Por Don Alonzo Nuñez de Castro, p. 220, 4to. Madrid, 1661.—Is there any evidence to show that the form of ancient Carthage was Square?

[38] "Im Arabischen heist Nabaa: er hat einen leisen Ton, wie die Zauberer thun, von sich gegeben; davon Naba, die Zaubertrommel, und Nabi, ein Prophet, Wahrsager, herkömmt. Eichhorn erklärt, in der Einleitung zum A. Testamente, die hebräischen Worte Nabi, Nabüm, durch göttliche Eingebung, und durch Leute, die durch göttliche Eingebung handeln."—Ueber den Ursprung der Spielkarten, s. 15.

[39] Heineken, Idée Générale d'une complète Collection d'Estampes, p. 240. Leipsic, 1771.

[40] The Abbé Bullet, previous to the appearance of his little book on Cards, in 1757, had commenced the publication of a Celtic Dictionary. In the former there are many traces of his mind having acquired a bent from his Celtic researches. He finds the origin of the term as or ace in the Celtic as; and in the same language he finds the true meaning of the names of the Queens of Clubs and Hearts, Argine and Judith. Argine is formed of ar, la, the, and gin, belle, beautiful; and Judith is a corruption of Judic,—which is formed of jud, a queen, and dyc, twice. Both those queens, according to his fancy, are intended to represent Anne of Bretagne, wife of Charles VIII and Louis XII. According to Père Daniel, Argine is an anagram of Regina, and is meant for Mary of Anjou, wife of Charles VII; and Judith is not the heroine of the Old Testament, but the wife of Louis-le-Debonnaire. Though those doctors disagree, yet each appears to have equally good reasons for his opinions. The consequence is that we can put no faith in either.

[41] The Abbé Rive, grounding his opinion on an interpolated passage in Guterry's French translation of Guevara's Epistles, ascribes the invention of cards to the Spaniards, and places it about the year 1330. With respect to the origin of the name Naipes, he adopts the N P etymology of the Spanish Academy. The Abbé's brochure on cards is entitled 'Eclaircissements Historiques et Critiques sur l'Invention des Cartes à jouer.' Paris, 1780.

[42] "Mappa, dit Papias, togilla, (c-est-à-dire, touaille, nappe); Mapa etiam dicitur Pictura vel Forma Ludorum, unde dicitur Mapamundi. Un vieux glossaire latin-français de la Bibliothèque de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, cité par Ducange, reproduit et explique ainsi ce passage précieux, en le traduisant: 'Mapamundi, mapemunde; et dicitur a Mapa, nappe ou picture, ou form de jeux.'"—Mélanges d'Origines Etymologiques et de Questions Grammaticales. Par M. Eloi Johanneau, p. 40. Paris, 1818.

[43] The description alluded to will be found at p. 41.

[44] The sex of the Company appears to be a matter of interest even with the ladies of Affghanistan. "At night the ladies of Mahomed Shah Khan, and other chiefs who were travelling in our company, invited Mrs. Eyre to dinner. She found them exceedingly kind in manner and prepossessing in outward appearance, being both well-dressed and good-looking. They asked the old question as to the gender of the Company."—Lieut. Eyre's Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan.

[45] "Apropos de bottes,"—"Now you speak of a Gun:" Moore, in his Life of Sheridan, observes that but a very imperfect report of Sheridan's celebrated speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings is preserved. The following piquant passage relating to the East India Company, as then constituted and acting, occurs in a report of the speech published in an old Magazine, for February, 1787. "He remembered to have heard an honourable and learned gentleman (Mr. Dundas) remark, that there was something in the first frame and constitution of the Company, which extended the sordid principles of their origin over all their successive operations, connecting with their civil policy, and even with their boldest achievements, the meanness of a pedlar and the profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and the military line could be observed auctioneering ambassadors and trading generals; and thus we saw a revolution brought about by affidavits; an army employed in executing an arrest; a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was they exhibited a government which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffic of a merchant's counting-house, wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with another."

[46] It is expressly stated that the cards of one of the packs are made of canvas, in a memorandum which accompanies them. This is the pack which is said to be a thousand years old. On first handling them they seemed to me to be made of thin veneers of wood.

[47] Though Mahometans might object to paint figured cards, it appears that they do "tolerate" them, and that very amply, by using them. See a description of the Gunjeefu, or cards used by the Moslems, at page 41.

[48] In a note to the article on Whist, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 48, previously referred to, this pack of cards is noticed, and the suits are thus enumerated: "While this article was in the press, we have been favoured with a sight of two packs of cards in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society: and, as truth is more strange than fiction, one of these, consisting of Ten Suits, certainly does represent the Ten Avatars or incarnations of the Vistnou, or Vishnava, sect.... The suits are:

• 1. The Fish.
• 2. The Tortoise.
• 3. The Boar.
• 4. The Lion.
• 5. The Monkey.
• 6. The Hatchet.
• 7. The Umbrella (or Bow.)
• 8. The Goat.
• 9. The Boodh.
• 10. The Horse.

"The Dwarf of the 5th Avatar is substituted by the Monkey; the Bow and Arrows of the 7th by the Cattashal or Umbrella, which gives precisely the same outline; and the Goat there, as often elsewhere, takes the place of the Plough."

On the pack of eight cards, which was probably one of those previously noticed in the present volume, the writer of the article makes the following observations: "The other pack has eight suits, of eight cards and two court cards each; eighty in all. [The number of cards, inclusive of the honours, in each suit, is twelve, as has been previously observed.] The Parallelogram, Sword, Flower, and Vase, answer to the Carreau, Espada, Club, and Copa of European suits: the Barrel (?), the Garland (?), and two kinds of Chakra (quoit) complete the set."—The Sword is plain enough, and so is the parallelogram. The Flower and the Cup, I confess, I have not been able to make out; and I question much if the Parallelogram—which in another pack, subsequently described, represents a royal diploma or mandate—be the original of the Carreau or Diamond on European cards. The "two kinds of Chakra" are simply two circular marks.

[49] Engravings of those subjects, as well as their description, will be found in 'Religions de l'Antiquité, considerées principalement dans leurs formes symboliques et mythologiques; ouvrage traduit de l'Allemand du Dr. Frederic Creutzer, par J. D. Guigniant.' Planches, premier cahier, p. 11, 8vo; Paris, 1825.

[50] "Espèce de roue enflammée, symbole de la force vivante qui pénètre et meut l'univers."

[51] The Institutions of Moses and those of the Hindoos compared. By Joseph Priestly, LL.D. p. 56. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1799.

[52] Beshbur.

[53] Kumbur.

[54] The names of the suits are thus explained: Taj, a crown. Soofed, white, abbreviated from the original appellation, zur-i-soofed, a silver coin; figuratively, the moon. Shumsher, a sabre. Gholam, a slave. Chung, a harp. Soorkh, red, or zur-i-soorkh, gold coin; figuratively, the sun. Burat, a royal diploma, or assignment. Quimash, merchandize.

[55] In cutting for the deal, Taj is the highest suit, and the rest have precedence, after that suit, in the order above recited.

[56] "By an oversight of the engraver, a native Bengalee artist, the Moon in No. 2, Plate I, is represented as crescent instead of full. [The error has been faithfully retained in our fac-similes.] The price of the pack was two rupees."

[57] "In the Dictionary Hindostanee and English, edited by the late Dr. Hunter, the names of the Eight Suits of Cards are to be found under the word Taj, the name of the first suit."—On the authority of a gentleman of eminent attainments in Hindostanee literature, I am informed that there is no Sanscrit word for Playing Cards.

[58] A particular account of the mode of playing the game of "L'Hombre à trois," will be found in the first volume of the 'Académie des Jeux.' The author observes, "Il est inutile de s'arrêter à l'etymologie du jeu de l'hombre; il suffit de dire que les Espagnols en sont les auteurs, et qu'il se sent du flegme de la nation dont il tire son origine." According to the same authority, "La Quadrille n'est, à proprement parler, que l'hombre à quatre, qui n'a pas, à la verité, la beauté, ni ne demande pas une si grande attention que l'hombre à trois; mais aussi faut-il convenir qu'il est plus amusant et plus recréatif."

[59] Barrington's Observations on the Antiquity of Card-playing in England.—Archæologia, vol. viii, 1787.

[60] Chung is also the Chinese name for a kind of harp.—In three other packs of Hindostanee cards, of the same kind, which I have had an opportunity of examining, the harp occurs both in the honours and the numeral cards. I suspect that the bird has been substituted through a mistake of the native artist who engraved the cards. In one of the packs just alluded to, the cards are not circular, but rectangular, like European cards, but of much smaller size. In another pack of Hindostanee cards which I have seen, the marks in all the eight suits are birds; in four of the suits, they are all of the same form—something like that of a starling—but differing in their colour; in three others they are all geese, and of the same colour, so that the suit is only to be distinguished by the ground on which they are painted. The mark of the eighth suit is a peacock.

[61] These are still the marks of the suits in Spain: "Copas, Espadas, Oros, y Bastos." The "Oros," literally golden money, are also called Dineros, that is, money in general. The same marks are also to be found on old Italian cards, and the names for them were, Coppe, Spade, Danari, and Bastoni. The discrepancy between the names, Spades and Clubs, and the marks of these suits, in English cards, will be noticed in its proper place.

[62] Religions de l'Antiquité; traduction Française de Guigniant.

[63] Von Hammer's Mines of the East.

[64] This is Mr. Colebrooke's conclusion. Sir John Malcolm gives a different account, the correctness of which may be very justly doubted, both as regards the present time and the past: "The four divisions of Hindoos, viz. the priests, soldiers, merchants, and labourers, appear to have existed in every human society, at a certain stage of civilization; but in India alone have they been maintained for several thousand years with prescriptive vigour."—Essay on the Bhills (Beels) by Sir John Malcolm, in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 65, 1824.

[65] Innocentio Ringhieri, Cento Ginochi liberali et d'Ingegno, p. 132. 4to. Bologna, 1551.

[66] The Life of St. Francis Xavier, by Father Bouhours: translated by John Dryden, pp. 71, 203, 697.

[67] "The 6th October, [1592] they met with a Malacca ship of 700 tons, which, after her main-yard was shot through, yielded.... They found on board fifteen pieces of brass cannon, 300 butts of Canary and Nipar or Palm-wine, with very strong raisin wine; all sorts of haberdashery-wares, as hats, red knit caps, and stockings of Spanish wool; velvets, taffeties, camblets, and silks; abundance of suckets, rice, Venice glasses, counterfeit stones (brought by an Indian from Venice, to cheat the Indians), Playing Cards, and two or three packs of French paper." The prize was taken in the Straits of Malacca; and the articles of European manufacture appear to have been brought to Malacca by the Portuguese.—The Naval Chronicle; or Voyages of the most celebrated English Navigators, vol. i, p. 392. 8vo. 1760.

[68] Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, vol. ii, p. 169. Second edit. 1835.

[69] Card-playing appears to be a very common amusement in Hindostan.—"I could remind or perhaps inform the fashionable gamesters of St. James's Street, that before England ever saw a dice-box, many a main has been won and lost under a palm-tree, in Malacca, by the half-naked Malays, with wooden and painted dice; and that he could not pass through a bazaar in this country [Hindostan] without seeing many parties playing with cards, most cheaply supplied to them by leaves of the cocoa-nut or palm-tree, dried, and their distinctive characters traced with an iron style.... At the corner of every street you may see the Gentoo-bearers gambling over chalked-out squares, with small stones for men, and with wooden dice; or Coolies playing with cards of the palm-leaf. Nay, in a pagoda under the very shadow of the idol, I have seen Brahmins playing with regular packs of Chinese cards."—Sketches of India: written by an Officer for Fireside Travellers at Home, pp. 68 and 100. Fourth edition, 1826.

[70] For the reference to the Ching-tsze-tung, and the explanation of the passage relating to cards, I am indebted to Mr. S. Birch, of the British Museum.

[71] "Second Mémoire sur les Relations politiques des Rois de France avec les Empereurs Mongols," dans le Journal Asiatique, de Septembre, 1822, p. 62.

CHAPTER II.
INTRODUCTION OF CARDS INTO EUROPE.

At what period Playing Cards first became known in Europe,—whether as an original invention, or introduced from some other quarter of the world,—has not yet been ascertained. From the silence, however, of all authorities by whom we might expect to find them distinctly named if they had been in common use, it may be fairly concluded, that, though they possibly might be known to a few persons before the year 1350, they did not begin to attract notice nor come into frequent use till towards the latter end of the fourteenth century. Packs of cards are distinctly mentioned by the name which they still retain in France—Jeux de Cartes—in an entry made in his book of accounts, about 1393, by Charles Poupart, treasurer of the household to Charles VI of France. Considering, then, this entry as an established fact in the history of cards, I shall now proceed to lay before the reader some of the grounds and evidences on which it has been asserted that cards were well known in Europe before that period.

Several writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in discussing the lawfulness of card-playing, gratuitously assuming that the game was included under the general term Alea, [72] have spoken of cards as if they had been known from time immemorial. The easy mode of deriving aliquid de aliquo by means of a comprehensive genus, is of frequent use with those decisive characters who delight in settling cases of conscience with a strong hand; and who, enveloped in the dust of the Schools, lay vigorously about them, both right and left, with weapons borrowed from "the old Horse Armoury of the Fathers," and re-ground, for present use, on the Decretals. He who can discover cards, implicitè, as Olearius has it, [73] in St. Cyprian's tract, De Aleatoribus, or in the injunctions against gaming in the canons of any Council or Synod previous to 1390, will have no difficulty in finding "Roulette" and "E or O," implied under the general term Tabulæ. Having thus indicated the value of the hypothetic evidence in favour of cards being known in early times,—because the game was subsequently comprehended under a schoolman's definition of the term Alea,—it may be left to pass for what it is worth.

Mons. Eloi Johanneau's proof that cards were known in the eleventh century, from the testimony of Papias, previously noticed, neither requires, nor indeed admits of serious refutation. If it could be shown that the word Naipe or Naibe was ever used in Spain or Italy to signify a painted cloth or a picture, before it was used to signify a Playing Card, its affinity with Nappe and Mappa might be admitted to be clearly established. John of Salisbury, who was born in the early part of the twelfth century, says not a word in his work 'De Nugis Curialium'—on the Trifling of Courtiers—which might indicate a knowledge of cards, although one of the chapters is especially devoted to an examination of the use and abuse of gaming. [74] Had cards formed one of the common pastimes of the courtiers of his age, it is highly probable that he would have mentioned them, by some name or other, so as to distinguish them from the other games which he enumerates.

The 38th canon of the Council of Worcester, held in 1240, contains the following prohibition: "Prohibemus etiam clericis, ne intersint ludis inhonestis, vel choreis, vel ludant ad aleas vel taxillos; nec sustineant ludos fieri de Rege et Regina, nec arietes levari, nec palæstras publicas fieri:" that is, "We also forbid clergymen to join in disreputable games or dancings, or to play at dice; neither shall they allow games of King and Queen to be acted [fieri], nor permit ram-raisings, nor public wrestlings. " [75] Ducange, who quotes the passage in his Latin Glossary, under the word Ludi, is inclined to think that the game de Rege et Regina—King and Queen—might have been the game of cards. There are not, however, any just grounds for entertaining such an opinion. The conjecture seems to have been suggested merely from the circumstance of there being a King and Queen in the cards with which the writer was most familiar; but had he known that no Queen is to be found in the earliest European cards, he probably would not have made so bad a guess. Besides, looking at the context, there can scarcely be a doubt that the games—not game—of King and Queen were a kind of mumming exhibitions which the clergy enjoyed as spectators, not as performers. Payments to minstrels and mummers for their exhibitions for the amusement of the monks, and eke of the lord Abbot himself, are not of unfrequent occurrence in the account books of old monasteries. In the same clause, the clergy are enjoined not to allow of ram-raisings nor public wrestlings—sports in which they were as unlikely to appear as actors as in the games of the King and Queen. What may have been meant by ram-raising—arietes levari—the curious reader is left to find, if he can, in the pages of Strutt and Fosbroke.

The next passage, supposed to relate to Playing Cards, which demands attention, is that which occurs in the Wardrobe accounts of Edward I, anno 1278, and which has been already quoted in the first chapter. It appears necessary to give it here again, together with the Hon. Daines Barrington's remarks on it, in the chronological order of evidences adduced in favour of the antiquity of Card Playing in Europe. "The earliest mention of cards that I have yet stumbled upon, is in Mr. Anstis's 'History of the Garter' (vol. ii, p. 307), where he cites the following passage from the Wardrobe rolls, in the sixth year of Edward the First: 'Waltero Sturton ad opus regis ad ludendum ad quatuor Reges, viii.s. v.d.'; from which entry Mr. Anstis, with some probability conjectures, that Playing Cards were not unknown at the latter end of the thirteenth century; and perhaps what I shall add, may carry with it some small confirmation of what he supposes."

The simple fact that the game of cards was known, both in France and England, by the name of the Four Kings, long before we had any special dissertations respecting its origin, is of more weight, in corroboration of Anstis's supposition, than Mr. Barrington's supplemental conjectures. The first question to be determined, is the identity of the game of cards, and that of the Quatuor Reges; but, without adducing the slightest evidence, he assumes the fact, and then proceeds to speculate where Edward might have learnt the game. But even admitting that cards were meant by the term Quatuor Reges, it is just as likely that Edward learned the game from his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, as that he learned it from the Saracens in the Holy Land; for, admitting it to be of Eastern origin, and that Europeans first obtained a knowledge of it from the Saracens, or a people of Arab race, it may be fairly supposed that Spain would be one of the countries in which cards would be earliest introduced. In the cards now in use in England, there are certain peculiarities in the names of two of the suits, as compared with the marks, which seem to intimate that we obtained our first knowledge of the game from Spain, although subsequently we might import our cards from France.

Seeing that chess was known in the East by a term signifying the Four Kings, and that it was a favorite amusement with the higher classes in Europe in the reign of Edward I, there can scarcely be a doubt that this was the game to which Walter Sturton's entry relates. If cards were indeed known in Europe in the early part of the reign of Edward the First, the silence respecting them, of all contemporary writers, for about a century afterwards, must be admitted as conclusive, though negative, evidence of their not being in common use. Petrarch, though he treats of gaming in one of his dialogues, never mentions them; and though Boccacio and Chaucer notice various games at which both the higher and lower classes of the period were accustomed to play, yet there is not a single passage in the works of either, which can be fairly construed to mean cards.

From the following passage, which occurs in a work on the 'Government of a Family,' in manuscript, composed by Sandro di Pipozzi, [76] in 1299, it has been concluded by Breitkopf that cards were at that period well known in Italy: "Se giucherà di denaro, o cosi, o alle carte, gli apparecchieria la via, &c." Zani, however, opposes to the authority of the manuscript, the negative evidence of Petrarch, who flourished at a subsequent period, and who, he thinks, would not have failed to have mentioned cards if they had then been known among the various games which he enumerates in the first dialogue of his treatise 'De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ.' [77] Mons. Duchesne also remarks, in his 'Observations sur les Cartes a jouer,' that, as the copy of Sandro di Pipozzi's work, cited by Taraboschi, and examined by Zani, is not of an earlier date than 1400, there is reason to believe that the express mention of cards in it, was the interpolation of a transcriber. That such interpolations were frequently made both by printers and transcribers, will appear evident from the following observations on several works, both printed and manuscript, which have been cited in proof of the antiquity of card-playing in Europe. [78]

The Abbé Rive, who ascribes the invention of cards to Spain, endeavours to show that they were known there in the early part of the fourteenth century. The evidence of this is, according to his statement, to be found in the Statutes of the military order of the Band, promulgated by Alphonso, King of Castile, where there is a passage expressly forbidding the members to play at cards. Whether cards are expressly mentioned in any old Spanish manuscripts of the Statutes in question, has not been ascertained; but of all the different editions, original and translated, of Guevara's 'Golden Epistles,' the work from which the Abbé Rive obtained his information, the first in which cards are expressly named, is that of the French translation by Gutery, published at Lyons in 1558. [79] As the word is not to be found in the original Spanish editions, nor in the Italian translations made from them, there cannot be a reasonable doubt of its being an interpolation of Gutery, who probably thought that a general prohibition of gaming necessarily included cards; and thus, "par conséquent," the Abbé Rive is furnished with positive evidence that the game of cards was common in Spain in 1332. Another authority, referred to by the Abbé Rive in favour of the antiquity of Spanish cards, is of the same kind. In a collection of the 'Laws of Spain,' printed in 1640, he finds the following passage in an Ordonnance issued by John I, King of Castile, in 1387: "We command and ordain that none of our subjects shall dare to play at dice or at cards (Naypes) either in public or in private, and that whoever shall so play, &c." [80] There can, however, be no doubt that the word cards (Naypes) is an interpolation; for it is not to be found in the same Ordonnance as given in the collection entitled 'Ordenanças Reales de Castilla,' printed at Medina del Campo, 1541. In this earlier edition, playing at dice and tables for money is indeed forbidden—"de jugar juego de dados ni de tables, a dinero"—but cards are not mentioned.

Jansen, in his 'Essai sur l'Origine de la Gravure en Bois et en Taille-douce,' cites the four following verses from the romance of Renard le Contrefait, pointed out to him by the late Mons. Van Praet, in evidence of cards being known in France at least as early as 1341, the year in which the romance was finished:

"Si comme fols et folles sont,

Qui pour gagner, au bordel vont;

Jouent aux dez, aux cartes, aux tables,

Qui à Dieu ne sont délectables."

The manuscript containing the verses as they are here given is in the Bibliothèque du Roi; but certainly it is not of earlier date than 1450; while in another manuscript, of the same romance, apparently about a hundred years older, also preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi, the word "Cartes" is not to be found in the corresponding verse, which is as follows:

"Jouent à geux de dez ou de tables."

Meerman [81] imagined that he had discovered a positive date for the early use of cards in France, in the work known as the Chronicle of Petit-Jehan de Saintré, but which was, in fact, written by Antoine de Lassale, in 1459. [82] Saintré had been one of the pages of Charles V, and on his being appointed carver to the King on account of his good conduct, the governor of the pages is represented as giving them a lecture on their bad courses: "Observe your companion here, who, through his good conduct, has acquired the favour of the King and Queen, and of all; while you are dicers and card-players, keeping bad company, and haunting taverns and cabarets." [83] The fact of the work having been composed in 1459, however, renders it of no authority on the question; and even if it had been written by Jehan Saintré himself, there cannot be a doubt that the term "Cartes" is an interpolation.

The term "joueux de cartes," card-players, is indeed to be found in the earliest printed editions of the work, and also in a manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi; but then this manuscript does not appear to be of an earlier date than the latter end of the fifteenth century, and there is also reason to believe that it is the identical manuscript from which the work was first printed. The word Cartes, however, is not to be found in a manuscript copy of the work in the library of the Sorbonne, nor in another in the library of St. Germains. The latter is much older than either of the others. Mons. Duchesne says that, in 1583, it belonged to Claude d'Expilly, and that these two verses, which show that it was even then considered an old manuscript, are written in the first folio:

"Ce livre soit gardé, non tant pour sa beauté,

Que pour le saint respect de son antiquité."

"From this examination," says Mons. Duchesne, "we may conclude that the word Cartes is an interpolation made by a transcriber a century later: consequently it cannot be admitted as a proof that cards were known in 1367." [84]

In an edition of William de Guilleville's allegorical poem, entitled 'Le Pelerinaige de l'Homme,' [85] printed at Paris by Verard in 1511, the following verses, in which cards are named, were pointed out to me by my friend Mr. N. Hill, of the Royal Society of Literature, to whom I am greatly indebted for much curious and interesting information relating to the Origin and History of Playing Cards.

At folio xlv, a, Oysivete tempts the pilgrim to quit the right way by recounting to him the pleasures enjoyed by those who place themselves under her guidance:

"... Je meyne gens au bois,

Et la leur fais-je veoir danseurs,

Jeux de basteaulx et de jougleurs,

Jeux de tables et déschiquiers,

De boulles et mereilliers.

De cartes, jeux de tricherie,

Et de mainte autre muserie."

At folio lxxii, a, Quartes—for so the word is there spelled—is noticed as a prohibited game:

"Mains ieux qui sont denyez,

Aux merelles, quartes, et dez," &c.

As there was reason to suspect that the word Cartes or Quartes, in the printed copies of De Guilleville's poem, was an interpolation, the same as it was found to be in other works examined by M. Duchesne, M. Paulin Paris, assistant-keeper of the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque du Roi, was requested by a friend of Mr. Hill, to compare the printed text with that of the earliest manuscript copies of the poem preserved in the collection under his care. The result of the collation was that the suspected words had been interpolated. The following is a translation of a portion of M. Paulin Paris's letter on the subject.

"I have compared the verses of our MSS. of the Pilgrimage of Human Life with the printed editions, and have found the latter very inexact. Cards are neither named nor alluded to in the MSS.; and in them the first passage, pointed out by your friend Mr. N. Hill, stands thus:

Ja leur fais je veoir baleurs,

Gieux de bastiaux et de jugleurs,

De tables et de eschequiers,

De boules et de mereliers,

De dez et d'entregsterie,

Et de mainte autre muserie.

MS. 6988, fol. 44, verso.
(No. 2), fol. 47, verso.

"The other passage referred to is, in both MSS. as follows:

Tant l'aime que je en suis sote,

Et que en pers souvent ma cote,

A mains jeux qui sont devées,

Aux merelles, tables, et dez."

As all the different interpolations referred to appear to have been made in good faith,—not for the purpose of showing the antiquity of card-playing, nor with any view of deceiving the reader, but merely to supply what the transcriber, looking at the manners of his own age, felt to be an omission,—they afford good grounds for concluding that, at the time when the several works were first written, cards were not a common game in either France or Spain; for, had they then been well known in those countries, it is just as likely that they would have been mentioned by the original writers as that they should have been interpolated by later transcribers.

In an article on Cards, in the 'Magasin Pittoresque' for April, 1836, an illustration is given, of which the annexed cut is a fac-simile. The writer of the article says that it is exactly copied from a miniature in a MS. of the Cité de Dieu, translated from St. Augustine by Raoul de Presles, who began the translation in 1371, and finished it in 1375. The writer, considering the MS. to be of the same date as the translation, says that the miniature represents persons of distinction of the reign of Charles V. [86] As he adduces, however, no evidence to show that the MS. is of so early a date, his so-called demonstration that cards were well known in 1375, is essentially defective; for, in transcripts of books, nothing is more common than to find, in the illustrations, things which were unknown when the works were first written. The costume, indeed, appears more like that of persons of distinction about the latter end of the reign of Charles VI, 1422, than of the reign of Charles V, 1364-1380. From the kind of cards which the parties are seen playing with, no safe conclusion can be drawn with respect to the age of the manuscript; for it is not positively known what kind of cards were chiefly used in France between 1392 and 1440. But, whatever may be the date of the manuscript, it is evident that numeral cards marked with "pips" and honours, similarly to those now in common use, were known in France at the time when the drawing was made.

The following account of the introduction of cards into Viterbo, in 1379, previously referred to in Chapter I, is here given as it is to be found in Leber's 'Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer.' "Feliciano Bussi relates, in his 'History of Viterbo,' [87] a work but little known, that in 1379, the epoch of the schism caused by the opposition of the anti-pope Clement to Urban VI, the mercenary troops of each party committed all manner of annoyances and spoliations in the Roman States, and that a great number of cattle, which had been stolen by the marauders, and driven to Viterbo for the provisionment of that city, were there seized, and carried off in a moment. 'And yet,' adds the historian, 'who could believe it! In this same year of so much distress there was introduced into Viterbo the game of cards, or, as I would say, playing cards, which previously were not in the least known in that city;' the words of Covelluzzo, are, folio 28, verso: 'In the year 1379, was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called Naib.'" As the introduction of cards into Viterbo is here directly recorded as a historical fact, there can be little doubt, if the passage in Covelluzzo be genuine, that cards were known to the Italian condottieri in 1379. In the chronicle of Giovan Morelli, of the date 1393, Naibi is mentioned as a kind of game; and, from the context, it has been concluded that it was one at which children only played. [88] At any rate it appears there as a game at which older people might play without reproach. Long after cards were condemned by synods and civic ordinances, as a game of hazard, grave writers allowed that sober, decent people might enjoy the game provided that they played purely for the sake of recreation, and not for the chance of winning their neighbour's money.

Heineken quotes from the 'Güldin Spil,' a book written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a Dominican friar, of the name of Ingold, printed at Augsburg, by Gunther Zainer, in 1472, the following passage relating to cards: [89] "Nun ist das Spil vol untrew; und, als ich gelesen han, so ist es kommen in Teutschland der ersten in dem iar, da man zalt von Crist geburt, tausend dreihundert iar." That is: "The game is right deceitful; and, as I have read, was first brought into Germany in the year 1300." The title of 'Güldin Spil,'—the Golden Game,—appears to have been given to the work by the author, on account of its being a kind of pious travesty of the principal games in vogue in Germany at the period when he wrote: having given each game a moral exposition, that which was formerly dross is converted into gold: the "old man" is put off, and the reformed gambler, instead of idling away his precious time at tric-trac, dice, or cards for beggarly groschen, "goes" his whole soul at the 'Güldin Spil.'

That the author had read somewhere of cards having been first brought into Germany in 1300, may be admitted without question; for to suppose that he told an untruth, would require to be backed by a supplementary conjecture as to his motives for falsifying,—a mode of eliciting the "truth," in frequent use indeed with philosophic historians when discussing questions of great import in the history of nations, but not exactly suitable for determining a trifling fact in the history of Playing Cards. Having admitted the good faith of the author of the 'Güldin Spil,' the next question that presents itself is, whether what he had read about the introduction of cards into Germany was in itself true; it is, however, unnecessary to discuss it here, for even if cards were known in Germany at so early a period, there is no satisfactory evidence of their having been common in that country until about a century later.

Von Murr, who also cites from the 'Güldin Spil' the preceding passage relating to cards, thinks that the epoch assigned, 1300, is at least fifty years too early. [90] He, however, states that he found cards—Carten—mentioned in an old book of bye-laws and regulations of the city of Nuremberg, to which he assigns a date between 1380 and 1384. The word occurs in a bye-law relating to gaming—'Vom Spil'—from the penalties of which the following games are, under certain circumstances, excepted: "Horse-racing, shooting with cross-bows, cards, shovel-board, tric-trac, and bowls, at which a man may bet from two pence to a groat." Whether the date assigned by Von Murr be correct or not, I am unable to determine. His reason for concluding that it was between the years 1380 and 1384, is as follows: "There is indeed no date to this bye-law, but it is written in the same hand as a law relating to the Toll-houses before the New Gate; and at folio 4 there is a precise date, namely the second day before Walpurg's day, 1384." The reason is not a very good one; for, even admitting the identity of the hand-writing in the ordinance relating to gaming, and in the act of 1381 relating to the toll-houses, yet both might have been copied into the book at a subsequent period. It is also to be observed, that, according to Von Murr's own account, the date 1384 occurs in the fourth folio, while the ordinance in which cards are mentioned, is in the sixteenth folio. But though the date assigned by Von Murr to the Nuremberg regulation, may be a few years too early, there is good reason to believe that cards were well known in Germany towards the conclusion of the fourteenth century. According to Mons. Neubronner, administrator at Ulm, (about 1806,) there was in the archives of that city an ancient parchment volume, called the Red Book, on account of its red initial letters, which contained a prohibition against Card Playing, dated 1397. [91]

Having now laid before the reader the principal authorities which have been alleged by various writers,—whether for the purpose of showing the antiquity of card-playing in Europe generally, or with the design of supporting their own opinion as to the invention of cards in some particular country—it is now time to enter on what may be termed the positive history of cards, beginning from the year 1393.

Charles VI of France lost his reason in consequence of a coup-de-soleil, in 1392; and during the remainder of his life continued insane, though with occasional lucid intervals. In either the same or in the following year, 1393, this entry occurs in the accounts of his treasurer, Charles Poupart, or, as he is named by Monstrelet, Charbot Poupart: "Given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilt and coloured, and variously ornamented, for the amusement of the king, fifty-six sols of Paris." [92] Menestrier, who was the first to point out this passage, concluded from it that the game of cards was then first invented by Gringonneur for the purpose of diverting the king's melancholy; and his account of the invention long passed as authentic in the politely learned world. That the game of cards was invented by Gringonneur is in the highest degree improbable; for the general tenor of the passage in which they are named by Poupart implies that the game was then already known, though from the notice of the gilding and colouring of the cards, it may be supposed that Gringonneur had a special order for them, and that they were not then in general use.

"If," says Piegnot, "Père Menestrier had paid attention to the manner in which the passage is drawn up, he would have perceived that the expression 'for three packs of cards,'—'pour trois jeux de cartes'—clearly announces, from its very simplicity, that cards were already known, and that their invention was of a much earlier date. The writer would not have mentioned so simply a collection of figures, just conceived and painted by Gringonneur on small pieces of paper, and very remarkable, as well from their symmetry and regularity, as from the characters represented on them. " [93]

The Hon. Daines Barrington, in his 'Observations on the Antiquity of Playing Cards in England,' doubts if Poupart's entry actually relates to Playing Cards. He is of opinion that the words "trois jeux de cartes" mean three sets of illuminations upon paper, "carte originally signifying nothing more." If Mr. Barrington had produced any authority to show that, either in the time of Charles VI, or at any other period, "un jeu de cartes" was used to signify a set of illuminations, or that the term ever signified anything else than a pack, or a game, of cards, his doubt would not have had so much the appearance of a starved conceit.

Though in 1393 cards might have been but little known and seldom played at, except by the higher classes, the game in a short time appears to have become common; for in an edict of the provost of Paris, dated 22d of January, 1397, working people are forbid to play at tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or nine-pins, on working days. From the omission of cards in an ordonnance of Charles V, dated 1369, forbidding certain games and addressed to all the seneschals, baillies, provosts, and other officers of the kingdom, it may be safely concluded that if cards were known in France in 1369, the game was by no means so common as in 1397. Duchesne indeed says that it is between 1369 and 1397, a period of twenty-eight years, that the invention of Playing Cards, or at least their introduction into France, ought to be placed.

Cards having been presented at the court of France for the amusement of the king, and prohibited in the city of Paris, either as too good or too bad for the amusement of working people, appear forthwith to have become fashionable; but, besides the recommendations alluded to, the game possesses charms of its own which could scarcely fail to render it a favorite with gamesters of all classes, as soon as its principles should be known. [94] To ladies and gentlemen who might play, merely as a relaxation from the more serious business of hunting and hawking, dressing and dining, no game could be more fascinating; while to those who might play for gain, what other game could be more tempting? The great infirmity of human nature, with the noble as well as the ignoble, as old stories plainly show, is the too eager desire to obtain money, or money's worth, in a short time and at little cost; and, hence, to risk a certain sum on the chance of obtaining a greater, whether at dice, cards, state lotteries, or art-union little-goes: in the latter, indeed, under the prudent direction of what may be called "handicap" legislators,—from their always coming out strong towards the end of the session, like the beaten horses for a handicap at the end of a race week,—the spirit of gaming is refined, and made subservient to the purposes of pure charity and the promotion of the fine arts. He who devised the game of cards, as now usually played, appears to have had a thorough perception of at least two of the weak points of human nature; for next to man's trust in his "luck," in all games of chance, is his confidence in himself in all games of skill. The shuffling, cutting, and dealing at cards, together with the chance afforded by the turn-up of the trump, place the novice, in his own conceit, on a par with the experienced gamester; who, on the other hand, is apt to underrate his opponent's chance, from his over-confidence in his own skill.

During the middle ages, the clergy, notwithstanding their vows and their pretensions to superior sanctity, appear to have been not a whit more exempt from the weaknesses of human nature than the unsanctified laity; nay, from the history of the times, it would seem that their vows rendered them not only more susceptible of temptation, but more likely to fall. Their preaching pointed one way, and their lives another; and hence the old proverb, "Mind what the friar says, not what he does." The vices of the times are indeed written in the canons of synods and councils, and in the penitentials of bishops directed against the immoralities of the clergy; and from the experience of the past, thus recorded, we have ample proof that clerical vows are not always a certain charm against secular vices. After cards were once fairly introduced, it would appear that the clergy were not long in "cutting in;" for, according to Dr. J. B. Thiers, they were expressly forbid to play at cards, by the synod of Langres, 1404. [95]

Menestrier refers to the statutes of Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, 1430, forbidding all kinds of gaming for money within his territories, though his subjects are allowed to amuse themselves at certain games, provided they play only for meat and drink. [96] "With respect to cards, they are forbidden; nevertheless, they are allowed to women, with whom men may also play, provided that they play only for pins,"—"dum ludus fiat tantum cum spinulis." In this passage a jurist would not construe the word "spinulis"—pins—literally, but would take it to mean any small articles of pins' worth. In France, about 1580, the douceur given by a guest to a waiter at an inn was called "his pins"—"épingles; " [97] and the proverbial phrase, "Tirer son épingle du jeu," seems to allude rather to "pin-stakes," than to the game of "push-pin."

Early in the fifteenth century, card-making appears to have become a regular trade in Germany, and there is reason to believe that it was not of much later date in Italy. In 1418 the name of a card-maker—"Kartenmacher,"—occurs in the burgess-books of Augsburg. In an old rate-book of the city of Nuremberg, the name "Ell. Kartenmacherin" occurs under the year 1433; and in the same book under the year 1435, the name "Elis. Kartenmacherin," probably the same person. In the year 1438 the name "Margret Kartenmalerin" occurs. [98] From those records it would appear that the earliest card-makers and card-painters of Nuremberg were women; and that cards were known in Germany by the name of "Karten" before they acquired the name of "Briefe." Heineken, however, maintains that they were first known in Germany by the latter name; for as he claimed the invention for his countrymen, the fact of the name being derived either from the French or Italian was adverse to his theory.

Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Ulm appear to have been the chief towns in Germany for the manufacture of cards about the middle of the fifteenth century; and, from the following passage, cited by Heineken from a manuscript chronicle of the city of Ulm, ending at 1474, it would appear that the German manufacturers, besides supplying the home market did also a large export business: "Playing cards were sent in small casks [leglenweiss] into Italy, Sicily, and also over sea, and bartered for spices and other wares." [99] It was probably against the German card-makers and painter-stainers that the magistracy of Venice issued an order in 1441, forbidding the introduction of foreign manufactured and printed coloured figures into the city under the penalty of forfeiting such articles, and being fined xxx liv. xii soldi. This order appears to have been made in consequence of a petition from the fellowship of painters at Venice, wherein they had set forth that "the art and mystery of card-making and of printing figures, which were practised in Venice, had fallen into total decay through the great quantity of foreign playing cards, and coloured printed figures which were brought into the city. " [100] The magistrates' order, in which this passage occurs as the preamble, was discovered by an Italian architect, of the name of Temanza, in an old book of rules and orders belonging to the company or fellowship of Venetian painters. Temanza sent an account of his discovery to Count Algarotti, who published it in the fifth volume of his 'Lettere Pittoriche.'

As it has been assumed that the earliest professional card-makers were wood-engravers, and that the engraving of cards on wood led to the execution of other figures, it appears necessary to trace the Briefmaler's progress, and to show how he came to be identified with the "wood-engraver in general." That the early card-makers or card-painters of Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, from about 1418 to 1450, were also wood-engravers, is founded entirely on the assumption that the cards of that period were engraved on wood, and that those who manufactured them, both engraved and coloured the figures. It is not, however, certain that the figures of the earliest cards, not drawn by hand, were engraved on wood; in the oldest cards, indeed, which I have had an opportunity of examining, and which appear to be of as early a date as the year 1440, it is evident that the figures were executed by means of a stencil. [101] From the circumstance of so many women occurring as card-painters in the town books of Nuremberg between 1433 and 1477, there appears reason to conclude that they, at least, were not wood-engravers.

The name of a wood-engraver proper—Formschneider—first occurs in the town-books of Nuremberg, under the year 1449; and as for twenty years subsequently, it frequently occurs on the same page with that of a card-painter— Kartenmaler—there cannot be a doubt that there was a distinction between the professions, although, like the barbers and surgeons of former times, they both belonged to the same fellowship or company.

A few years subsequent to the Formschneider, the Briefmaler occurs; but though his designation has the same literal meaning as that of the Kartenmaler, yet his business seems to have been more general, including both that of the card-painter and wood-engraver. About 1470 we find the Briefmalers not only employed in executing figures, but also in engraving the text of block-books; and about the end of the fifteenth century the term seems to have been generally synonymous with that of Formschneider. Subsequently the latter term prevailed as the proper designation of a wood-engraver, while that of Briefmaler was more especially applied, like that of the original Kartenmaler, to designate a person who coloured cards and other figures. [102]

Though we have positive evidence that, about the year 1470, the Briefmaler was a wood-engraver as well as a colourer of cards; and though it be highly probable that the outlines of the figures on cards were then engraved on wood, and that, from this circumstance, the Briefmaler became also a wood-engraver, yet we have no proof that the earliest wood-engravers in Europe were the card-makers. Von Murr indeed confidently affirms "that card-makers and card-painters were known in Germany eighty years before the invention of typography, and that the card-makers were at first properly wood-engravers, but that, after the art of wood-engraving was applied to the execution of sacred subjects, a distinction was made." [103] He who can thus persuade himself that the germ of wood-engraving in Europe is to be found in cards, will doubtless feel great pleasure in tracing its interesting development; the first term, cards engraved on wood, being assumed, we then have figures of saints with their names, or short explanations, engraved on wood; next block-books consisting of sacred subjects with copious explanatory text; and lastly typography and the press: "ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute." [104]

At what period the art of wood-engraving was first introduced in Europe, or in what country it was first practised, has not been precisely ascertained. Not the slightest allusion is made to its productions by any writers of the fourteenth century; and the earliest authentic date that has hitherto been observed on any wood-engraving, is 1423. A wood-engraving said to contain the date 1418 was indeed discovered at Malines in 1844, pasted in the inside of an old chest; but as the numerals have evidently been repaired by means of a black-lead pencil, both the genuineness and the authenticity of the date have been very justly questioned. The person by whom it was found, the keeper of a little public-house, almost immediately sold it to an architect named De Noter, of whom it was purchased by the Baron de Reiffenberg, for the Royal Library of Brussels, of which he is the conservator, and where it is now preserved. [105]

Before this discovery, the earliest wood-engraving with a date, was the St. Christopher, in Earl Spencer's collection, in which the date 1423, partly in words and partly in numerals—"Millesimo cccc^o xx^o tercio"—is seen engraved in the same manner as the other parts of the subject. The first person who published an account of the St. Christopher, was Heineken. When he first saw it, it was pasted on the inside of the cover of a manuscript volume in the library of Buxheim, near Memmingen in Suabia, within fifty miles of Augsburg, a city which appears to have been the abode of wood-engravers almost from the very commencement of the art in Europe, and in which we find a card-maker so early as 1418. On the inside of the cover, Heineken also observed another cut, of the annunciation, of the same size as the St. Christopher, and apparently executed about the same time. The volume within whose covers those cuts were pasted, was bequeathed to the convent by Anna, canoness of Buchaw, who was living in 1427, but who probably died previous to 1435. The Annunciation, as well as the St. Christopher, is now in the possession of Earl Spencer.

From the time of their first introduction, woodcuts of sacred subjects appear to have been known in Suabia and the adjacent districts by the name of Helgen or Helglein, a corruption of Heiligen, saints; and in course of time this word also came to signify prints or woodcuts generally. It would seem that originally the productions of the wood-engraver were considered as imperfect till they were coloured; and as the St. Christopher, the Annunciation, and others of an early date, appear to have been coloured by means of a stencil, there is reason to conclude that most of the "Helgen" of the same period were coloured in the same manner. In France the same kind of cuts, probably coloured in the same manner, were called "Dominos,"—a name which of itself indicates the affinity of the subjects with those of the Helgen. Subsequently, the word "Domino" was used to signify coloured or marbled paper generally; and the makers of such paper, as well as the engravers and colourers of woodcuts, were called Dominotiers.

Though we cannot reasonably suppose that the cut of St. Christopher, with the date 1423, was the very first of its kind, there is yet reason to believe that the art of wood-engraving was then but little known. As the earliest woodcuts are observed to be coloured by means of a stencil, it would seem that at the time when wood-engraving was first introduced, the art of depicting and colouring figures by means of a stencil was already well known; but as there are no cards engraved on wood to which so early a date as 1423 can be fairly assigned, and as at that period there were professional card-makers established at Augsburg, it would appear that wood-engraving was employed on the execution of "Helgen" before it was applied to cards, and that there were stencilled cards before there were wood-engravings of saints. Though this conclusion be not exactly in accordance with an opinion which I have expressed in another work, [106] it is yet that which, on a further investigation of the subject, appears to be best supported by facts, and most strongly corroborated by the incidental notices which we have of the progress of the Briefmaler or card-painter from his original profession to that of a wood-engraver in general.

Old Stencilled Cards in the British Museum. No. 1 (p. 88.)

Old Stencilled Cards in the British Museum. No. 2 (p. 88.)

The annexed cuts are fac-similes of some of the old cards to which I have alluded at page 83. The originals are preserved in the print-room of the British Museum; and from a repeated examination of them, I am convinced that they have been depicted by means of a stencil, and not printed nor "rubbed off" from wood blocks. They are not coloured, nor cut into single cards; but appear just as they are shown in the fac-similes. They formed part of the covers or "boards" of an old book, and were sold to the British Museum by Mr. D. Colnaghi. Looking at the marks of the suits in those cards, the character of the figures, and the manner in which they are executed, I should say that they are not of a later date than 1440. Though cards of only three suits occur, namely, Hearts, Bells, and Acorns, there can be little doubt that the fourth suit was Leaves, as in the pack described by Mr. Gough, in the eighth volume of the 'Archæologia.' As in Mr. Gough's cards, so in these, there is no Queen; though, like them, there appears to have been three "coat" cards in each suit, namely, a King, a Knight, or Superior Officer, and a Knave, or Servant; in other words, King, Jack, and Jack's Man. The lower cards, as in Mr. Gough's pack, appear to have been numbered by their "pips" from two to ten, without any ace.

That those cards were depicted by means of a stencil is evident from the feebleness and irregularity of the lines, as well as from the numerous breaks in them, which, in many instances, show where a white isolated space was connected with other blank parts of the stencil. The separation seen in the heads of the figures in No. 1 of the fac-similes here given, would appear to have been occasioned by the stencil either breaking or slipping while the operator was passing the brush over it. From the costume of the figures in these cards, I am inclined to think that they are the production of a Venetian card-maker. A lion, the emblem of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice, and a distinctive badge of the city, appears, as in the annexed cut, in the suit of Bells; and a similar figure, with part of a mutilated inscription, also occurs in the suit of Acorns.

Card-playing appears to have been a common amusement with the citizens of Bologna, about 1423. In that year St. Bernardin of Sienna, who died in 1444, and was canonized in 1450, preaching on the steps in front of the church of St. Petronius, described so forcibly the evils of gaming in general, and of Card-playing in particular, to which the Bolognese were much addicted, that his hearers made a fire in the public place and threw their cards into it. A card-maker who was present, and who had heard the denunciations of the preacher, not only against gamesters, but against all who either supplied them with cards or dice, or in any manner countenanced them, is said to have thus addressed him, in great affliction of mind. [107] "I have not learned, father, any other business than that of painting cards; and if you deprive me of that, you deprive me of life, and my destitute family of the means of earning a subsistence." To this appeal the Saint cheerfully replied: "If you do not know what to paint, paint this figure, and you will never have cause to regret having done so." Thus saying, he took a tablet and drew on it the figure of a radiant sun, with the name of Jesus indicated in the centre by the monogram I.H.S. The card-painter followed the saint's advice; and so numerous were the purchasers of the reformed productions of his art, that he soon became rich. In the Bibliothèque du Roi at Paris, there is an old woodcut of St. Bernardin, with the date 1454, which has been supposed to have been engraved with reference to this anecdote, as the saint is seen holding in his right hand the symbol which he recommended the card-maker to paint. A fac-simile of this figure of St. Bernardin is given in the 'Illustrated London News,' of the 20th of April, 1844, and reprinted in a work recently published, entitled 'The History and Art of Wood Engraving.'

John Capistran, a disciple of St. Bernardin, and also a Franciscan friar, followed the example of his master in preaching against gaming; and his exhortations appear to have been attended with no less success. In 1452, when on a mission to Germany, he preached for three hours at Nuremberg, in Latin, against luxury and gaming; and his discourse, which was interpreted by one of his followers, produced so great an effect on the audience, that there were brought into the market-place and burnt, 76 jaunting sledges, 3640 backgammon boards, 40,000 dice, and cards innumerable. Under an old portrait of Capistran, engraved on wood by Hans Schaufflein, there is an inscription commemorating the effects of his preaching as above related. [108]

FOOTNOTES:

[72] "Aleæ nomen quamvis pro omni ludo, qui in varietate fortunæ consistat, sumi queat juxta sententiam, vel opinionem aliquot scriptorum; quorum è numero est Joannes Azorius in tertia parte Institutionum Moralium, dicens: 'Aleæ ludus comprehendit Ludum Chartarum Lusoriarum, Taxillorum, Tabularum, et Sortium.' Propriè tamen, ut ait Jacobus Spiegelius, accipi solet pro Tesseris, quæ Tali etiam, vel Taxilli, et vulgò Dadi vocitantur: Tesseræ autem, Tali, vel Taxilli, et Cubi, vel Dadi, sunt idem, diversi vero quantum ad numerum laterum et punctorum.... Non desunt alii, qui Aleæ nomen pro Chartis Lusoriis passim intelligendum esse velint, ut Polydorus Virgilius, et alii scribunt."—Commentarius contra Ludum Alearum, Chartarum scilicet ac Taxillorum; a Fratre Angelo Roccha, Episcopo Tagastensi, p. 2, 4to. Romæ, 1616.

[73] "Bishop of Bamberg. What do you say is the name of the emperor who wrote your Corpus Juris?

Olearius. Justinian.

Bishop. A clever prince!—I drink to his memory. It must be a grand book.

Olearius. It may indeed be styled the book of books: a collection of all laws, ready for the decision of every case; and whatever is now obsolete or doubtful is expounded by the comments with which the most learned men have enriched this most admirable work.

Bishop. A collection of all laws! The deuce!—Then the Ten Commandments are there?

Olearius. Implicitè, they are; explicitè, not.

Bishop. That is just what I mean;—there they are, plainly and simply, with out explication."—Götz von Berlichingen, a Play, by Goethe, act i.

[74] John of Salisbury—Joannes Saresberiensis—was born in England about 1110. He went to France when he was about seventeen years old, and remained in that country several years. He subsequently visited Rome in a public capacity. On his return to England, he became the chaplain and acquired the friendship of Thomas à Becket. After the murder of à Becket—of which he was an eye-witness—he withdrew to France, in order to shun the hostility of his patron's enemies. From his attachment to à Becket, no less than from his reputation as a learned and pious man, he was elected Bishop of Chartres, where he died in 1182. The work by which he is principally known is that referred to in the text. The general title of it is, 'Policraticus sive de Nugis Curialium, et Vestigiis Philosophorum, libri octo.' The chapter on gaming, "De Alea, et usu et abusu illius," is the fifth of the first book. Edit. Leyden, 1639.

[75] Archæologia, vol. viii, 1787.

[76] Mons. Leber, in his Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer, remarks that Singer refers to this author as Pipozzi di Sandro, and that the name thus transposed has been copied by other writers on the subject of cards. It is, however, to be observed that Breitkopf twice gives the name in the same manner as Singer.

[77] Materiali per servire alla Storia dell' Origine et de' Progressi dell' Incizioni in rame, in legno, &c. p. 159. 8vo. Parma, 1802.

[78] Those observations have been chiefly derived from Mons. Duchesne's paper on cards above referred to, and from a letter written by Mons. Paulin Paris, assistant keeper of the MSS. in the Bibliothèque du Roi, in answer to certain queries submitted to him through a friend of the writer.

[79] The original Spanish edition of Guevara's Epistles was printed at Valladolid in 1539, and the work was several times reprinted in Spain and in Flanders. The letters were also translated into Italian and French; and several editions were published before the year 1600. There is an English translation by Geffery Fenton, 1582; and another by Edward Hellowes, 1584.

[80] "Mandamos y ordenamos q̄ ningunos de los de nuestros reynos, seā osados de jugar dados ni naypes, en publico ne en escōdido, y qualquier q̄ los jugare," &c.—Recopilacion de las Leyes destos Regnos, &c. Edit. 1640.

[81] Meerman, Origines Typographicæ, vol. i, p. 222. Edit. 1765.

[82] "Tout le monde sait que ce charmant ouvrage a été composé en 1459 par Antoine de Lassalle."—Duchesne, Précis Historique sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 5, prefixed to the 'Jeux de Cartes Tarots,' &c. Mons. Duchesne himself does not appear to have known "what all the world knows" when he wrote his 'Observations sur les Cartes à jouer,' printed in the Annuaire Historique, 1837; for he there seems to admit that the work was composed by a person who lived at the period to which it relates, and refers to two manuscripts in which the word "cartes" is not to be found. He says that a third manuscript, which contains it, appears to have been transcribed about the end of the fifteenth century, but does not inform the reader that the work itself is a mere romance, written in 1459.

[83] "Veez ci vostre compaignon qui, pour estre tel, a acquis la grace du Roy et de la Royne et de tous, et vous qui estes noiseux et joueux de cartes et de dez, et sieuvés deshonnestes gens, taverniers, et cabarets."

[84] Peignot considers the passages in which Cards are mentioned genuine, both in the Chronicle of Petit-Jehan de Saintré and in the romance of Renard le Contrefait. He had taken the passages just as he found them in Meerman and Jansen, and made no further inquiry. Saint-Foix appears to have been the first person in France who pointed out the passage relating to cards in the Chronicle of Petit-Jehan de Saintré. See Peignot's Recherches sur les Danses des Morts, et sur l'Origine des Cartes à jouer, pp. 211-262, 315.

[85] This work was composed about 1330.

[86] "... Voici une démonstration concluante: c'est le fac-simile d'une miniature du manuscrit de la traduction de la Citéde Dieu de Saint Augustin, par Raoul de Presles, qui le termina en 1375. Cette miniature représente des personnages de distinction du règne de Charles V, débout autour une table ronde et jouant aux cartes. Nous devons cette miniature à l'obligeance de M. le Comte H. de Viel-Castel, qui nous l'a communiquée, ainsi que d'autres documens qu'il avait réunis sur les cartes. Le manuscrit d'où on a tiré la miniature, achevé en 1375, avait été commencé en 1371."—Magasin Pittoresque, Quatrième Année, Avril, 1836, p. 131.

[87] Istoria della Citta di Viterbo, p. 213. Folio, Roma, 1742.

[88] "Non giuocare a zara, nè ad altro giuoco di dadi, fa de' giuochi che usano i fanciulli; agli aliossi, alla trottola, a' ferri, a' Naibi, a' coderone, e simili,"—Cronica di Giovan. Morelli, in Malespini's Istoria Fiorentina, p. 270. 4to, Florence, 1728.

[89] Idée Générale d'une Collection complète d'Estampes, p. 240.

[90] C. G. von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 2ter Theil, s. 98. 8vo, Nuremberg, 1776.

[91] Jansen, Essai sur l'Origine de la Gravure en Bois, &c., quoted by Peignot, p. 256.

[92] "Donné à Jacquemin Gringonneur, peintre, pour trois jeux de cartes à or et à diverses couleurs, ornés de plusieurs devises, pour porter devers le Seigneur Roi, pour son ébatement, cinquante-six sols parisis."—Menestrier, Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive, tom. ii, pp. 168-94. 12mo, Trévoux, 1704. According to Barrois, the name Gringonneur signified a maker of . "Ce nom a fait prendre le change; il signifie faiseur de grangons. 'Grangium Grangonscertus tesserarum ludus.' Voir Glossarium de Ducange, Supplément, t. ii, col. 651. Les premières cartes se vendaient à Paris, chez Jacquemin, gringoneur, fabricant de dés, parce que les dés et les cartes s'employaient simultanément. (Voir Miniature de notre cabinet dans l'Abusé en Court, manuscrit de XV^e siècle.) D'où dégringoler, rouler en sautillant comme les dés."— Elémens Carlovingiens, linguistiques et littéraires, p. 265. 4to, Paris, 1846.

[93] The following "shrewd reply," which owes its point to Menestrier's account of the invention of cards, appeared in a weekly journal about three years ago. "Sir Walter Scott says, that the alleged origin of the invention of cards produced one of the shrewdest replies he had ever heard given in evidence. It was made by the late Dr. Gregory, at Edinburgh, to a counsel of great eminence at the Scottish bar. The doctor's testimony went to prove the insanity of the party whose mental capacity was the point at issue. On a cross-interrogation he admitted that the person in question played admirably at whist. 'And do you seriously say, doctor,' said the learned counsel, 'that a person having a superior capacity for a game so difficult, and which requires, in a pre-eminent degree, memory, judgment, and combination, can be at the same time deranged in his understanding?' 'I am no card-player," said the doctor, with great address, 'but I have read in history that cards were invented for the amusement of an insane king.' The consequences of this reply were decisive."

[94] About the beginning of the fifteenth century the passion for gaming appears to have been very prevalent in France; and persons who were addicted to it endeavoured to guard themselves from its fascinations by voluntary bonds, with a penalty in case of infraction. The following account of a bond of this kind is extracted from the Memoirs of the Academy of Dijon for 1828. "Mons. Baudot a trouvé deux actes de ce genre, qui méritent d'être conservés à cause de leur singularité. Le premier est tiré du protocole de Jehan Lebon, notaire, et de ses clercs Jehan Bizot, Guyot Bizot de Charmes, et Jehan Gros. On y lit qu'en 1407, il y eut convention de ne pas jouer pendant une année, entre Jehan Violier de Vollexon, boucher, à Dijon; Guillaume Garni, boucher, Huguenin de Grancey, tournestier (employé aux tournois), Vivien le Picardet, pâtissier, et Gorant de Barefort, coustellier, tous de Dijon, à peine de deux francs d'or au profit de ceux qui n'auront pas joué, et de deux francs d'or à lever par le Procureur de la Ville et Commune de Dijon, au profit de la Ville."—The second was a similar engagement, in the year 1505.

[95] Thiers, referring to the Synod of Langres of 1404, Tit. de Ludibus prohibitis, thus gives the prohibition: "Nous défendons expressement aux Ecclesiastiques, principalement à ceux qui sont dans les saints ordres, et sur tout aux prêtres et aux curés, de jouer aux dez, au triquetrac, ou aux cartes."—Traité des Jeux et des Divertissemens, par M. Jean Baptiste Thiers, Docteur en Théologie, p. 193. 12mo, Paris, 1686. Though this synod is also referred to by Menestrier, Bullet, and others, it is overlooked by Mons. Duchesne, who, speaking of the prohibition of cards to the clergy, says, "C'est seulement au synode de Bamberg, in 1491, qu'au titre xvi on trouve la défense: 'Ludosque taxillorum et chartarum, et his similes, in locis publicis.'"—Observations sur les Cartes à jouer, dans l'Annuaire Historique, pour l'année 1837, p. 176.

[96] Peignot, who affects great precision in dates and names, says that the Statuta Sabaudiæ were "publiées en 1470 par Amédée VIII, Duc de Savoie." Amadeus VIII, the amateur hermit—who was elected Pope by the Council of Basle in 1439, and who took the name of Pope Felix V—died in 1451.

[97] "Donnez nous du linge blanc. Faictes que nons ayons des linceux blancs, et vous aures demain voz espingles."—J. T. Fregii Pædagogus, p. 112. Basle, 1582.

[98] Von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 2er Theil, s. 121, 122.

[99] Heineken, in his French version of this passage, in the Idée Générale, erroneously translates the word leglenweiss, "en ballots." In his Neue Nachrichten, however, he gives the correct explanation, "das ist, in kleinen Fassern"—"that is, in small casks." Though the word Lägel, a barrel, is obsolete in Germany, yet its diminutive, "leglin,"—as if Lägelin—is still used in Scotland for the name of the ewe-milker's kit. It is needless to cite the work from which I copy this bit of information, as the author, I am sure, will not find any fault with me for any liberties that I may take.

[100] "Conscioscia che l'arte e mestier delle carte e figure stampide, che se fano in Venesia è vegnudo a total deffaction, e questo sia per la gran quantità de carte a zugur e figure depente stampide, le qual vien fate de fuora de Venezia."—Algarotti, Lettere Pittoriche, tom. v, p. 320.

[101] A stencil is a thin piece of pasteboard, parchment, or metal, in which the outlines and general forms of any figures are cut out, for the purpose of being "stencilled" on cards, paper, pasteboard, plastered walls, &c. The operation is performed by passing over the stencil a brush charged with colour, which entering into the cut out lines imparts the figure to the material beneath.

[102] In a work entitled "ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑ omnium illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium," &c., with cuts designed by Jost Amman, and descriptions in Latin verse by Hartman Schopper, Frankfort, 1568, there is a cut of a Briefmaler, and another of a Formschneider; the former appears to be colouring certain figures by means of a stencil; while the latter appears to be engraving on wood. There are also editions of the work, with the descriptions in German verse by Hans Sachs, the celebrated Meistersänger and shoemaker of Nuremberg. Though it appears evident that at the time of the publication of this work the business of a Briefmaler was considered as distinct from that of a Formschneider, there is yet reason to believe that the old Briefmalers still continued both to engrave and print woodcuts. On several large cuts with the dates 1553 and 1554, we find the words "Gedrukt zu Nürnberg durch Hanns Glaser, Brieffmaler."

[103] "Kartenmacher, und Kartenmaler, oder wie sie später (1473) hiessen, Briefmaler, sind schon in Deutschland 80 Jahre vor der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst gewesen. Die Kartenmacher waren anfangs die eigentlichen Formschneider, ehe man geistliche Figuren schnitt, da sie dann in der Folge der Zeit eine besondere Innung ausmachten."—Von Murr, Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 2er Theil, s. 89.

[104] "L'homme le plus versé dans la connaissance des premiers produits de la xylographie, le Baron de Heineken, était intérieurement persuadé que la première empreinte tirée sur un ais grossièrement sculpté, qui parut en Europe, était une carte. Dans son opinion, que nous croyons bien fondée, la gravure des cartes à jouer conduisit à celle des images de Saints, qui donna l'idée de la gravure des inscriptions ou légendes, d'où naquit l'imprimerie.—Ainsi, une carte aurait produit la presse! Quelle mère et quelle postérité!"—Leber, Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 3.

[105] The subject of this cut is the Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms, surrounded by four female saints, namely, St. Catherine, St. Barbara, St. Dorothy, and St. Margaret. A fac-simile of it is given in the Athenæum for the 4th October, 1845. The Baron de Reiffenberg, who published a particular account of the cut, and of the circumstances of its discovery, entertains no doubt of the authenticity of the date; and considers that the costume of the figures and the general style of drawing are in perfect accordance with the period. Another writer, however, questions the authenticity of the date, which he says has been retouched with a black-lead pencil; and, from the costume, he concludes that it is not of an earlier date than 1468. He supposes that the numeral l may have been omitted before xviii in the date, which in the fac-simile of the cut stands thus: mcccc · xviii.—See Quelques Mots sur la Gravure au Millésime de 1418, par C. D. B. 4to, Brussels, 1846.

[106] "It has been conjectured that the art of wood-engraving was employed on sacred subjects, such as the figures of saints and holy persons, before it was applied to the multiplication of those 'books of Satan,' playing cards. It, however, seems not unlikely that it was first employed in the manufacture of cards; and that the monks, availing themselves of the same principle, shortly afterwards employed the art of wood-engraving for the purpose of circulating the figures of saints; thus endeavouring to supply a remedy for the evil, and extracting from the serpent a cure for his bite."—A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical, p. 58. Published by Charles Knight and Co. London, 1839.

[107] Father Tommaso Buoninsegni, in his 'Discorso del Giuoco,' p. 27, Florence, 1585, thus refers to the opinion of St. Bernardin and others on the subject of gaming. "Sono stati alcuni tanto scrupolosi e severi, i quali hanno detto, che non solo quegli che giuocano à restituire tenuti sono, ma di più li heredi, e quei che prestano dadi, tavole, carte, e chi vende, e compera baratterie e bische, ed inoltre li artefici, i quali fanno e vendono carte, e dadi, ed altri strumenti da giuocare; e di più li Ufficiali, Rettori, Magistrati e Signori, i quali potendo prohibire cotali giuochi, non li proibiscono."

In the notice of the life of St. Bernardin, in the Acta Sanctorum, cited by Peiguot, he is said to have required that cards [naibes], dice, and other instruments of gaming should be given up to the magistrates to be burnt. The anecdote of the card-painter is given in Bernini's Histoire des Hérésies, tom. iv, p. 157. Venise, 1784. Thiers, in his Traité des Jeux, pp. 159-161, gives an extract from a sermon of St. Bernardin against gaming: his reference to the works of St. Bernardin is "Serm. 33, in Dominic. 5, Quadrag. 1 part. princ." but he does not mention the edition.

It may here be observed that the opinion of Dr. Jeremy Taylor on this subject is opposed to that of St. Bernardin. See his discussion of the Question on Gaming: "Whether or no the making and providing such instruments which usually minister to it, is by interpretation such an aid to the sin as to involve us in the guilt?"

[108] Geschichte der Holzschneidekunst von den ältesten bis auf die neuesten Zeiten, nebst zwei Beilagen enthaltend den Ursprung der Spielkarten und ein Verzeichniss der sämmt xylographischen Werke, von Joseph Haller, s. 313. 8vo, Bamberg, 1823.

CHAPTER III.
THE PROGRESS OF CARD-PLAYING.

Having now shown at what period cards were certainly well known in Europe, and at what period card-making was a regular business in Italy and Germany, I shall proceed to lay before the reader a series of facts showing the prevalence of the game in various countries, both among great and little people.

From the repeated municipal regulations forbidding card-playing, to be found in the Burgher-books of several cities of Germany, between 1400 and 1450, it would seem that the game was extremely popular in that country in the earlier part of the fifteenth century; and that it continued to gain ground, notwithstanding the prohibitions of men in office. There are orders forbidding it in the council-books of Augsburg, dated 1400, 1403, and 1406; though in the latter year there is an exception which permits card-playing at the meeting-houses of the trades. It was forbidden at Nordlingen in 1426, 1436, and 1439; but in 1440 the magistrates, in their great wisdom, thought proper to relax in some degree the stringency of their orders by allowing the game to be played in public-houses. In the town-books of the same city there are entries, in the years 1456 and 1461, of money paid for cards at the magistrates' annual goose-feast or corporation dinner. In the books of the company of "Schuflikker"—cobblers—of Bamberg, there is a bye-law agreed to in 1491, which imposes a fine of half a pound of wax—not shoemakers', but bees' wax for the company's holy candle, to burn at the altar of the patron saint,—upon any brother who should throw the backgammon pieces, cards, or dice out of the window. [109] From this it may be concluded that the "Schuflikker" of Bamberg in 1491 were accustomed, like gamesters of a more recent period, to vent their rage, when losers, on the cards and dice.

Baptista Platina, in his treatise 'De Honesta Voluptate'—which is neither more nor less than an antique "School of Good Living," teaching how creature comforts may be best enjoyed—mentions cards as a game at which gentlemen may play, after dinner or supper, to divert their minds, as deep thinking after a hearty meal impedes digestion. There was, however, to be no cheating nor desire of gain—which is as much as to say that the stakes were to be merely nominal—lest bad passions should be excited, and the process of healthy concoction disturbed. [110]

Galeottus Martius, a contemporary of Platina, is perhaps the earliest writer who "speculated," or at least published his speculations, on the allegorical meaning of the marks of the four suits of cards. I shall give a translation of the passage, which occurs in chapter xxxvi of his treatise 'De Doctrina promiscua,' written, according to Tiraboschi, between 1488 and 1490. I leave others to divine the author's precise meaning, referring them to the original text which is given below. The topics of this chapter are: "The greater and lesser Dog Star, Orion, the Evening Star, the Pleiades, the Hyades, Bootes, the Kids, the planet Venus, and the game of Cards." Towards the conclusion, after having exhausted his astronomical topics, he thus proceeds, apropos of the benign influence of Venus.

"From the excellency of this planet it is not surprising that the ancients called a happy throw at dice Venus,—not Jove, though considered of greater fortune. Thus Propertius:

"Venus I hoped with lucky dice to cast,

But every time the luckless Dogs turned up."

"An unlucky cast was called the Dog—"Canis"—and also the Little Dog—"Canicula"—with reference to the Stars. Thus Persius:

"Far as the luckless little Dog-star's range."

"What kind of stars the Great and Little Dog were, has been already shown. Some persons, indeed, might laugh at the invention of such kind of games being ascribed to the learned, were it not plain from reason that the game of cards was also devised by wise men. To say nothing about the Kings, Queens, Knights, and Footmen,—for every one knows the distinction between dignity and military service,—is it not evident, when we consider the significance of swords, spears, cups, and country loaves, that the inventor of the game was a man of shrewd wit? When there is need of strength, as indicated by the Swords and Spears, many are better than few; in matters of meat and drink, however, as indicated by the Loaves and Cups, a little is better than a great deal, for it is certain that abstemious persons are of more lively wit than gluttons and drunkards, and much superior in the management of business. What I call country loaves, from their form and colour,—Pliny speaks of bread of a yellow colour—are the marks which are ignorantly supposed to signify pieces of money. The Cups are goblets, for wine." [111]

The remainder of the passage cannot be literally translated into English, as it relates chiefly to the pronunciation of the word "Hastas"—Spears. The substance of it, however, is as follows: "The common people say 'Hastas,' as the aspiration H, and the letter V are interchangeable, and so are B and V, both in Greek and Latin. As Bastoni [clubs] are vulgarly called Hastoni, so have they sometimes the form of spears [Hastarum], but mostly that of bills, for both are military weapons." The original passage is extremely perplexing; and the only thing in it that appears plain to me is the writer's desire to convert Bastoni—Clubs—into "Hastas," Spears. The Bastoni, which he says are called Hastoni, or the Hastoni which are called Bastoni,—for there is here an ambiguity, as in the celebrated oracular response, "Aio te, Æacida, Romanos vincere posse"—can only relate to the figures of the things as seen on cards, and not to the things themselves; for the author says that they have sometimes the shape of spears, but more frequently that of bills. The real meaning of this I take to be, that the Bastoni—Clubs—on cards were more like bills than spears, notwithstanding that H and V, and V and B, were interchangeable letters. From the account of Galeottus, it is evident that the usual marks of the suits of Italian cards were in his time, Coppe, Spadi, Danari, and Bastoni,—Cups, Swords, Money, and Clubs.

In 1463 it would appear that cards were well known in England; for, by an act of parliament passed in that year, which was the third of Edward IV, the importation of playing cards was expressly prohibited. This act, according to Anderson, was passed in consequence of the manufacturers and tradesmen of London, and other parts of England, having made heavy complaints against the importation of foreign manufactured wares which greatly obstructed their own employment. [112] If we suppose that cards were included in the prohibition for the above reason, it would follow that card-making was then a regular business in England.

Whether cards were home-manufactured or obtained from abroad, they appear about 1484 to have been, as they are at present, a common Christmas game. Margery Paston thus writes to her husband, John Paston, in a letter dated Friday, 24th Dec., 1484: "Right worshipful husband, I recommend me unto you. Please it you to weet that I sent your eldest son John to my Lady Morley, to have knowledge of what sports were used in her house in the Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband; and she said that there were none disguisings, nor harpings, nor luting, nor singing, nor none loud disports; but playing at the tables, and chess, and cards; such disports she gave her folks leave to play, and none other. Your son did his errand right well, as ye shall hear after this. I sent your younger son to the Lady Stapleton; and she said according to my Lady Morley's saying in that, and as she had seen used in places of worship thereas [where] she hath been." [113] It may not be improper here to caution the reader against confounding "places of worship," with "houses of prayer," and hence inferring that cards were then a common game in churches, with gentlemen's servants, at Christmas time. By "places of worship" are meant the dwelling-places of worshipful persons, such as lords, knights, and justices of the peace: in those days there were no stipendiary police-magistrates, and every Shallow on the bench was "a gentleman born."

Whether Richard III, in whose reign the letter above quoted was written, added dicing and card-playing to his other vices, we have no account either in public history which deals, or ought to deal, wholesale, in "great facts," or in private memoirs, which are more especially devoted to the retailing of little facts. His successor, however, Henry VII, was a card player; for Barrington observes that in his privy-purse expenses there are three several entries of money issued for his majesty's losses at cards. Of his winnings there is no entry; though his money-grubbing majesty kept his accounts so exactly as to enter even a six-and-eightpenny bribe, given to propitiate his mercy in favour of a poor criminal,—thus turning a penny by trafficking with his prerogative of pardoning:

"To have the power to forgive,

Is empire and prerogative."

It would appear that cards was a common game at the court of Henry the VII, even with the royal children; for, in 1503, his daughter Margaret, aged 14, was found playing at cards by James IV of Scotland, on his first interview with her, after her arrival in Scotland for the purpose of being married to him. [114] James himself is said to have been greatly addicted to card-playing; and in the accounts of his treasurer there are several entries of money disbursed on account of the game. On Christmas night, 1496, there are delivered to the king at Melrose, to spend at cards, "thirty-five unicornis, eleven French crowns, a ducat, a ridare, and a leu"—in all forty-two pounds. On the 23d August, 1504, when the king was at Lochmaben, he appears to have lost several sums at cards to Lord Dacre, the warden of the English marches; and on the 26th of the same month, there is an entry of four French crowns given "to Cuddy, the Inglis luter, to louse his cheyne of grotis, quhilk he tint at the cartis,"—to redeem his chain of groats which he lost at cards.[115]

M. Duchesne, in his 'Observations sur les Cartes à jouer,' says, somewhat inconsistently, that cards are of Italian origin, and that it was either at Venice or at Florence, that the Greek refugees from Constantinople, first made them known. M. Duchesne is as incorrect in his chronology, as he is singular in his notions with respect to the Italian origin of playing cards,—first brought to Venice or Florence, by Greeks. [116] The refugees to whom he apparently alludes were the Greeks who sought an asylum in Italy, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, in 1453, which is sixty years after the time that we have positive evidence of cards being known in France. But though no evidence has been produced to show that cards were first brought into Europe from Constantinople, it is yet certain that they were known to the Greeks, before the end of the fifteenth century; for Ducange, in his Glossary of Middle-Age Greek, under the word "XAPTIA, Ludus chartarum, [117] quotes the following verse from a manuscript of Emanual Georgillas on the Plague at Rhodes:

"Και τα ταυλια, και τα χαρτια, και ζαρια κατακαυσουν."

"Burn the tables, cards, and dice."

"It appears from this," says Ducange, "that the game of cards, the origin of which is uncertain, was at least known in 1498, the year in which this mortality happened." In the 'Journal des Dames,' for the 10th April, 1828—a publication, which I have not had the fortune to see, but which is referred to by Brunet the younger, in his 'Notice Bibliographique sur les Cartes à jouer,'—there is a detailed account of the modern Greek cards manufactured at Frankfort. [118]

Towards the close of the fifteenth, and in the early part of the sixteenth century, before Luther had sounded the tocsin of religious reform, and given a new impulse to both the busy and the idle, the Germans appear to have been greatly addicted to gaming. Woodcuts of this period showing men and women playing at cards and dice are common. John Geiler of Kaisersberg, a famous preacher in his day, who, like Latimer, was accustomed to season his sermons with a little humour—not to say fun—rings a peal against gaming in his 'Speculum Fatuorum,' first printed at Strasburg about 1508. He says that there are some games at cards which are purely of chance, such as "der offen Rusch und Schantzen," [119] while others, such as "des Karnefflins" depend on both chance and skill. In treating of the lawfulness of playing at cards, dice, and similar games "for the sake of recreation"—a saving clause which appears to have been introduced in favour of the laboriously studious and devout,—he cites authorities both pro and con. A certain gloss says that to play at such games, whether for money, or "gratis," is a deadly sin; and Hostiensis says that to play for recreation, for money,—"to kill themselves for love, with wine"—is a deadly sin in the laity as well as the clergy. Angelus, however, says that it is lawful for both clergy and laity to play for recreation, for small stakes: "pro modico non notabili." Geiler's own conclusion is that, as doctors differ, there is danger. Gaming in his time, as in our own, appears to have levelled all distinctions: lords and ladies, and even clergymen, dignified or otherwise, eager to win money, and confiding in their luck, or their skill, cared but little for the rank or character of those with whom they played, provided they could but post the stakes; and felt no more compunction in winning a ruffling burgher's money, than a peer would in receiving the amount of a bet from a cab-man, or a wealthy citizen, a few years ago, in rendering bankrupt the wooden-legged manager of a thimble-rig table at Epsom or Ascot.—The "thimble-rig," however, is now numbered with the things that have been—"fuit." Lord Stanley brought it into political disrepute; and Sir James Graham put it down, just about the time that the railway speculation began to be the "rage" under the auspices of a knowing Yorkshireman.

Thomas Murner, a Franciscan friar, availing himself apparently of the popularity of card-playing, introduced the term "Chartiludium" as a "caption" in the title of his 'Logica Memorativa,' printed at Strasburg, in 1509. [120] The work is evidently that of a scholastic pedant, who might possibly be expert enough in ringing the changes on verbal distinctions, but who had not the least knowledge of things, nor any idea of the right use of reason. The book is adorned with numerous cuts, which represent cards, inasmuch at the top of each there is an emblem, just as there is the mark of the suit in each of our coat cards. The cuts and the text taken together, for they mutually render each other more intelligible, form such a mass of complicated nonsense as would puzzle even a fortune-teller to interpret. In his prologue, Murner asks pardon for the title of his book; and assures the studious youths, for whose instruction it was devised, that he had not been led to adopt it from any partiality to card-playing; that, in fact, he had never touched cards, and that, from his very childhood he had abhorred the perverse passion for play. In 1518 Murner, apparently stimulated by the success of his logical card-play, published an introduction to the civil law, written and pictorially illustrated in the same manner as the former. [121]

As I have not been able to make anything of Murner's logical card-play, either as regards the instruments or the matter professed to be taught, I willingly avail myself of what Mons. Leber has said on the subject in his 'Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer.'—"These cards," says Mons. Leber, "made much noise in their time; and this might well be, for they were a novelty which it was easier to admire than to comprehend. At first people fancied that they saw in them the work of the devil; and it was even a question whether the author should not be burnt, seeing that he could be nothing more than a conjurer with the logicians of that age. But the conjurer's pupils made such extraordinary progress, that people cried out "wonderful!" and Murner's book was pronounced divine. Although those cards are fifty-two in number, they have nothing in common with our pack. They differ from all other cards, whether for gaming, or of fanciful device, in the multiplicity and the division of the suits, which the inventor has applied to the divisions of logic, after a method of his own. Of these suits there are no less than sixteen, corresponding with the same number of sections of the text, and having the following names and colours:

"Such is the whimsicality of those signs, and such the oddity of their relation to the things signified, that the learned Singer has been deterred from the attempt to make them known; at any rate, he declares that he will not undertake to explain that which even the most profound logicians of the day might not be able to comprehend. This is easily said, but we see no impossibility in explaining how the author understood himself. One example will be sufficient to give an idea of Murner's figured language, and of the the parts which might be played by serpents, cats, acorns, and crayfish in the chair of Aristotle when its occupant was a friar of the sixteenth century.

"The figure of a man with a crown on his head, a patch over one of his eyes, a book in one hand, and a trowel in the other, relates to section, or "Tractatus," X, APPELLATIO. It displays three symbols, the object of which is intelligence or definition: 1, the logical appellation; 2, relative terms or ideas which have become connected in the mind; 3, privative terms, expressive of privation or exclusion. The open book, [which appears shut] is the symbol of the definition; the trowel indicates connexion; and the patch over the eye signifies privation. The star, which occupies the place of the mark of the suit, and casts its light on all the other three symbols, signifies that clearness is the first merit in every definition." The cut here given is a fac-simile of that referred to.

Rogers, availing himself of the poetic license, though but to a small extent, has represented the followers of Columbus as playing at cards in his first voyage of discovery, to the West Indies, in 1492.

"At daybreak might the caravels be seen,

Chasing their shadows o'er the deep serene;

Their burnish'd prows lash'd by the sparkling tide,

Their green-cross standards waving far and wide.

And now once more to better thoughts inclined,

The seaman, mounting, clamour'd in the wind.

The soldier told his tales of love and war;

The courtier sung—sung to his gay guitar.

Round, at Primero, sate a whiskered band;

So Fortune smiled, careless of sea or land." [122]

Garcilasso de la Vega, to whom Mr. Rogers refers, says nothing about Primero or the followers of Columbus playing at the game; he only mentions, in his 'History of the Conquest of Florida,' that the soldiers who were engaged in that expedition, having burnt all their cards after the battle of Mauvila, [about 1542], made themselves new ones of parchment, which they painted admirably, as if they had followed the business all their lives; but as they either could not, or would not, make so many as were wanted, players had the cards in their turn for a limited time. [123] Although we have no positive evidence of the fact, it is yet not unlikely that there were cards in the ships of Columbus; unless indeed they had been especially prohibited to the crews on this occasion, as they were to the soldiers and sailors of the Spanish Armada in 1588. [124] Herrera has recorded in his 'History of the Spanish Discoveries in America,' that Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, who was made prisoner by Cortes in 1519, took great pleasure in seeing the Spanish soldiers play at cards.

Barrington, in his 'Observations on the Antiquity of Card-playing in England,' says, "During the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, this amusement seems not to have been common in England, as scarcely any mention of it occurs either in Rymer's Fœdera, or the statute book." Had Mr. Barrington been as well read in old poems and plays as he was in the more ancient statutes, it is likely that he would have been of a different opinion. He says, "It is not improbable, however, that Philip the Second, with his suite, coming from the court of Charles V, made the use of cards much more general than it had been, of which some presumptive proofs are not wanting." The supposition is plausible; but as the presumptive proofs which he alleges, were as likely to be found in the reign of Edward IV, as in the reign of Mary, they are of no weight in the determination of the question. As Catherine, the wife of Henry VIII, was a Spanish princess, and as it is recorded that, amongst her other accomplishments, she could "play at tables, tick-tack, or gleek, with cardes or dyce," [125] the persons forming her suite were just as likely as those of the suite of Philip II, to have brought into England Spanish cards with the marks of swords and clubs proper—Espadas and Bastos: but there can scarcely be a doubt that such cards were known in England long before. Mr. Barrington's partiality to his theory about Spanish cards, and of the game becoming much more general in England after the marriage of Philip and Mary, has probably caused him either to entirely overlook, or attach too little importance to a presumptive proof, to be found in the statute-book, of cards being a common amusement in England in the reign of Henry VIII. In a statute relating to plays and games, passed in the thirty-third year of that king's reign, 1541, we find the following restrictions. "No Artificer, or his Journeyman, no Husbandman, Apprentice, Labourer, Servant at Husbandry, Mariner, Fisherman, Waterman, or Serving-man, shall play at Tables, Tennis, Dice, Cards, Bowls, Closh, Coyting, Logating, or any other unlawful game out of Christmas; or then, out of their master's house or presence, in pain of 20s.; and none shall play at Bowls in open places, out of his garden or orchard, in pain of 6s. 8d." [126] In the morality of Hycke-Scorner, reprinted in Hawkins's 'Origin of the English Drama,' from a black letter copy in Garrick's collection, of at least as early a date as the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII, the following are enumerated as forming part of the company of the ships that came over with Hycke-Scorner:

"Braulers, lyers, getters, and chyders,

Walkers by night, and great murderers,

Overthwarte gyle, and joly carders."

In the morality of Lusty Juventus, written by R. Wever, in the reign of Edward VI, Hypocryse says to Juventus, whom he invites to breakfast:

"I have a furny carde in a place,

That will bear a turne besides the ace;

She purvoyes now apace

For my commynge."

From a subsequent passage it appears that this "furny carde" [127] is the naughty woman, "litle Besse," the personification of "Abhominable Livyng."

In the comedy of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' said to have been first printed in 1551, old dame Chat thus invites two of her acquaintance to a game at cards:

"What, Diccon? Come nere, ye be no stranger:

We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fire;

Thou shalt set on the king, if thou come a little nyer.

Come hither, Dol; Dol, sit down and play this game,

And as thou sawest me do, see thou do even the same;

There is five trumps besides the queen, the hindmost thou shalt find her."

In a Satire on Cardinal Wolsey and the Romish Clergy by William Roy, without date, but most likely printed in 1527, [128] some of the bishops are charged with gaming in addition to their other vices:

"To play at the cardes and dyce,

Some of theym are nothynge nyce,

Both at hasard and mom-chaunce."

In the privy purse expenses, from 1536 to 1544, of the Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, afterwards Queen Mary, there are numerous entries of money delivered to the princess to play at cards. In a prefatory memoir, Sir Frederick Madden remarks: "Cards she seems to have indulged in freely; and there is a sum generally allotted as pocket-money for the recreation every month." [129] As Mary is said to have been extremely devout, we may presume that, adopting the decisions of the more indulgent casuists, she availed herself of their permission to play at cards as a recreation when her mind was fatigued with the exercise of her strenuous piety. The records of the burning of men and women in her reign for the sake of religion, form a singular contrast with the entries in her privy purse expenses of money delivered to her to play at cards.

From the preceding incidental notices of cards in poems and plays, as well as from the direct evidence of the statute book and the privy purse expenses of the Princess Mary, it would appear that card-playing was common in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, both in the cottage and the palace; and there is reason to believe that about the same period the game was equally common in Scotland. William Dunbar, who wrote in the reigns of James IV and James V, in his 'General Satire,' exposing the depravity of all classes of people in the kingdom, thus alludes to the prevalence of dicing and card-playing:

"Sic knavis and crakkaris, to play at carts and dyce,

Sic halland-scheckaris, qwhilk at Cowkilbyis gryce

Are haldin of pryce, when lymaris do convene;

Sic store of vyce, sae mony wittis unwyse,

Within this land was nevir hard nor sene."

In the poems of Sir David Lyndsay, there are several allusions to card-playing; and in his 'Satire of the Three Estaites,' which Chalmers says was first acted at Cupar, Fifeshire, in 1535, the Parson declares himself to be an adept at the game:

"Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche:

Mair ferylie can play at the fute-ball;

And for the cartis, the tabels, and the dyse,

Above all parsouns I may beir the pryse."

In Sir David's poem, entitled 'The Cardinal,' exposing the personal vices and tyrannical conduct of Cardinal Beaton, who was assassinated at St. Andrews in 1546, that prelate is represented as a great gamester: [130]

"In banketting, playing at cartis and dyce,

Into sic wysedome I was haldin wyse;

And spairit nocht to play with king nor knicht,

Thre thousand crownes of golde upon ane night."

In the examination of Thomas Forret, a dean of the Kirk, and vicar of Dollar, on a charge of heresy brought against him by John Lauder, a tool of Cardinal Beaton's, at Edinburgh, 1st March, 1539, Forret's answer to one of the charges of his accuser, affords some idea of the manner in which many bachelor priests of the period were accustomed to spend their tithes:

"Accuser. False Heretic, thou sayest it is not lawful to Kirkmen to take their teinds (tythes) and offerings and corps-presents, though we have been in use of them, constitute by the Kirk and King, and also our holy father the Pope hath confirmed the same?

"Dean Forret. Brother, I said not so; but I said it was not lawful to Kirkmen to spend the patrimony of the Kirk, as they do, on riotous feasting, and on fair women, and at playing at cards and dice." [131]

Pinkerton, in his 'History of Scotland,' says: "Stewart the poet, in an address to James V, advises him to amuse himself with hunting, hawking, and archery, justing, and chess; and not to play at cards or dice, except with his mother or the chief lords, as it was a disgrace for a prince to win from men of inferior station, and his gains at any time ought to be given to his attendants."

At a period somewhat later, it would appear that card-playing was a common amusement on the borders of Scotland, and that the sturdy rievers, whose grand game was cattle lifting, were accustomed to while away their idle hours at cards for placks and hardheads. The following curious passage occurs in a letter dated Newcastle, 12th January (1570), printed in the second volume of Sir Ralph Sadler's 'State Papers.' The writer was a gentleman named Robert Constable, who appears to have been sent into Scotland to endeavour to persuade his kinsman, the Earl of Westmoreland, to return to England and submit himself to Elizabeth's mercy. [132]

"I left Ferniherst, and went to my ostes house, [133] where I found many guests of dyvers factions, some outlaws of England, some of Scotland, some neighbours thereabout, at cards; some for ale, some for placks and hardhedds vox populi that the Lord Regent would not, for his owne honour, nor for the honour of his country, deliver the Earls, if he had them bothe, unless it were to have their Quene delivered to him; and if he wold agree to make that change, the borderers would start up in his contrary, and reave both the Quene and the Lords from him, for the like shame was never don in Scotland; and that he durst better eate his own lugs than come agen to seke Farneherst; if he did, he should be fought with ere he came over Sowtray edge. Hector of Tharlows [134] hedd was wished to have been eaten amongs us at supper."

In the old ballad entitled 'The Battle of the Reed Swire,' giving an account of a fray at a Warden meeting, which ended in a general fight, we find cards mentioned. This meeting was held in 1576 near the head of the river Reed, on the English side of the Carter fell; and appears to have been attended, like a fair, by people from both sides of the Border.

"Yet was our meeting meik enough,

Began with mirriness and mows;

And at the brae abune the heugh

The clerk sat down to call the rows;

And sum for kye, and sum for ewes,

Callit in of Dandrie, HOB, and JOCK:

I saw come marching owre the knows

Fye hundred Fennicks in a flock.

"With jack and speir, and bowis all bent,

And warlike weapons at their will;

Howbeit they were not weil content,

Yet be me troth we feird na ill:

Some gaed to drink, and some stude still,

And sum to cards and dyce them sped;

While on ane Farstein they fyld a bill, [135]

And he was fugitive that fled."

About the same period the game of cards was a common amusement in the south of Ireland. Spenser, in his 'View of the State of Ireland,' written about 1590, speaks of an idle and dissolute class of people called "Carrows," who, he says, "wander up and down to gentlemen's houses, living only upon cards and dice; the which, though they have but little or nothing of their own, yet will they play for much money; which, if they win, they waste most lightly; and if they lose, they pay as slenderly, but make recompense with one stealth or another; whose only hurt is not that they themselves are idle lossels, but that through gaming they draw others to lewdness and idleness." [136]

The counterpart to this picture was to be found in Spain about the same period; and as the intercourse between the two countries was frequent, and the favorite game in both was "One-and-Thirty," it is not unlikely that the Irish obtained their knowledge of cards from the Spaniards. In Cervantes' 'Comical History of Rinconete and Cortadillo,' a young Spanish vagabond gives the following account of his skill at cards: "I took along with me what I thought most necessary, and amongst the rest this pack of cards, (and now I called to mind the old saying, 'He carries his All on his back,') for with these I have gained my living at all the publick houses and inns between Madrid and this place, playing at One-and-Thirty; and though they are dirty and torn, they are of wonderful service to those who understand them, for they shall never cut without leaving an ace at bottom, which is one good point towards eleven, with which advantage, thirty-one being the game, he sweeps all the money into his pocket: besides this, I know some slight tricks at Cards and Hazard; so that though you are very dexterous and a thorough master of the art of cutting buskins, I am every bit as expert in the science of cheating people, and therefore I am in no fear of starving; for though I come but to a small cottage, there are always some who have a mind to pass away time by playing a little; [137] and of this we may now try the experiment ourselves: Let us spread the nets, and see if none of these birds, the carriers, will fall into them; which is as much as to say that you and I will play together at One-and-Thirty, as if it was in earnest; perhaps somebody may make the third, and he shall be sure to be the first to leave his money behind him."

At what period cards were first used in Europe for the purposes of divination or fortune-telling has not been ascertained. In the 'Magasin Pittoresque' for 1842, page 324, there is a cut entitled "Philippe-le-Bon consultant une tireuse de cartes," copied from a painting ascribed to John Van Eyck. Though it has been denied that this picture is really by Van Eyck, it is yet admitted that the costume is that of the reign of Charles VIII, between 1483 and 1498. [138] Supposing then that the picture belongs to the latter period, we have thus evidence of cards being used for the purposes of fortune-telling before the close of the fifteenth century. The gypsies, who are unquestionably of Asiatic origin, appear to have long used them for this purpose; and if they brought cards with them in their earliest immigration into Europe, as Breitkopf supposes, they are just as likely to have brought with them their occult science of cards as to have acquired it subsequently from Europeans. The earliest work, expressly treating of the subject appears to be 'Le Sorti,' written or compiled by Francesco Marcolini, printed at Venice in 1540. In the prologue, the author professes to explain the mode of applying what he calls his pleasant invention—"piacevole inventione;" but beyond the fact that certain cards are to be used, I have not been able to make out his meaning. The only cards to be employed were the King, Knight, Knave, ten, [139] nine, eight, seven, deuce, and ace of the suit Danari or Money. Besides the small cuts of cards, of which the following are specimens, the work contains a number of wood-engravings, some of which are designed in a spirited manner. A work similar to Marcolini's, entitled 'Triompho di Fortuna,' by Sigismond Fanti, professing to teach the art of solving questions relating to future events, but without using cards, was printed at Venice in 1527.

Juggling and fortune-telling by means of cards, whenever introduced, appear to have had many professors in the latter half of the sixteenth century. A trick performed with cards by a juggler, appears to have excited the inquisitive genius of Lord Bacon when a boy; and his biographer, Basil Montagu, thinks that from this circumstance his attention was first directed to an inquiry into the nature of the imagination. [140] Reginald Scott, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, first published in 1584, has a chapter "Of Cards, with good cautions how to avoid cousenage therein; special rules to convey and handle the cards; and the manner and order how to accomplish all difficult and strange things wrought with cards."

"Having now," says he, "bestowed some waste money among you, I will set you to cards; by which kind of witchcraft a great number of people have juggled away not only their money, but also their lands, their health, their time, and their honesty. I dare not (as I could) show the lewd juggling that cheaters practice, lest it minister some offence to the well-disposed, to the simple hurt and losses, and to the wicked occasion of evil doing. But I would wish all gamesters to beware, not only with what cards and dice they play, but especially with whom, and where they exercise gaming. And to let dice pass, (as whereby a man may be inevitably cousened,) one that is skilful to make and use Bumcards may undo a hundred wealthy men, that are not given to gaming; but if he have a confederate present, either of the players or standers-by, the mischief cannot be avoided. If you play among strangers, beware of him that seems simple or drunken; for under their habit the most special couseners are presented; and while you think by their simplicity and imperfections to beguile them, (and thereof, perchance, are persuaded by their confederates, your very friends as you think,) you yourself will be most of all over-taken. Beware also of the betters by and lookers on, and namely of them that bet on your side; for whilst they look on your game without suspicion, they discover it by signs to your adversaries, with whom they bet and yet are their confederates."

Among the tricks with cards which he notices, are the following: "How to deliver out four Aces and to convert them into four Knaves. How to tell one what card he seeth in the bottom, when the same card is shuffled into the stock. To tell one, without confederacy, what card he thinketh. How to tell what card any man thinketh, how to convey the same into a nut-shell, cherry-stone, &c., and the same again into one's pocket. How to make one draw the same, or any card you list, and all under one devise." The two verses which he quotes in the margin should be inscribed as a motto on the dial-plate of every gamester's watch. "Of dice play, and the like unthrifty games, mark these two old verses, and remember them:

Ludens taxillis, bene respice quid sit in illis:

Mors tua, sors tua, res tua, spes tua, pendet in illis."

Rowland, in his 'Judicial Astrology Condemned,' relates the following anecdote of Cuffe, the Secretary of the Earl of Essex, "a man of exquisite wit and learning, but of a turbulent disposition," who was hung at Tyburn, on the 13th of March, 1602, for having counselled and abetted the Earl in his treason. "Cuffe, an excellent Grecian, [141] and Secretary to the Earl of Essex, was told twenty years before his death that he should come to an untimely end, at which Cuffe laughed, and in a scornful manner, intreated the astrologer to show him in what manner he should come to his end; who condescended to him, and calling for cards, intreated Cuffe to draw out of the pack three which pleased him. He did so, and drew three Knaves and laid them on the table with their faces downwards, by the wizard's direction, who then told him, if he desired to see the sum of his bad fortunes, to take up those cards. Cuffe, as he was prescribed, took up the first card, and looking on it, he saw the portraiture of himself, cap-a-pie, having men compassing him about with bills and halberds; then he took up the second, and there he saw the judge that sat upon him; and taking up the last card, he saw Tyburn, the place of his execution, and the hangman, at which he laughed heartily; but many years after, being condemned for treason, he remembered and declared this prediction."

Queen Elizabeth, as well as her sister, Mary, was a card player; and even her grave Lord Treasurer, Lord Burleigh, appears to have occasionally taken a hand at Primero. [142] That she sometimes lost her temper, when the cards ran against her, may be fairly inferred from the following passage, which occurs in a letter, written in the latter part of her reign, by Sir Robert Carey to his father, Lord Hunsdon: her violent language must have been the result of her holding a bad hand at the moment that the presence of young Carey reminded her of his father's procrastination. "May it please your L. t'understande that yesterday yn the afternune I stood by hyr Ma^tie as she was att Cards in the presens chamber. She cawlde me to hyr, and askte me when you mente too go too Barwyke. I towlde hyr that you determinde to begyn your jorney presently after Whytsontyd. She grew yntoo a grete rage, begynnynge with Gods wonds, that she wolde sett you by the feete, and send another in your place yf you dalyed with hyr thus, for she wolde not be thus dalyed withall. [143]

Though the laity of all ranks and conditions—except apprentices [144] —appear to have played at cards and dice without let or hinderance, notwithstanding any statute to the contrary, yet the clergy seem to have been rather more sharply looked after. In the 'Injunctions geven by the Quenes Majestie, as well to the Clergye as the Laity,' printed by Richard Jugge and John Cawood, 1559, the clergy are thus admonished: "Also the sayde ecclesiastical persons shall in no wyse, nor for any other cause then for theyr honeste necessities, haunt or resort to anye Tavernes or Alehouses. And after theyr meates, they shall not geve themselves to any drynkyng or ryot, spendyng theyr tyme idelly by day or by nyght, at dyse, cardes, or tables playing, or anye other unlawfull game." [145] In the 'Injunctions exhibited by John, Bishop of Norwich, at his first visitation, in the third year of our Soveraign Ladie Elizabeth,' printed at London by John Daye, 1561, officials are enjoined to inquire, "Whether any parson, vicare, or curate geve any evell example of lyfe; whether they be incontinent parsones, dronkardes, haunters of tavernes, alehouses, or suspect places; dycers, tablers, carders, swearers, or vehementlie suspected thereof."

A notice of a dramatic representation of the game of cards occurs in the accounts of Queen Elizabeth's 'Master of the Revels,' 1582. [146] In that year he and his officers were commanded "to show on St. Stephen's day at night, before her Majesty at Wyndesore, a Comodie or Morral devised on a game of the cardes," to be performed by the children of her Majesty's Chapel. From the following observations of Sir John Harrington on this "Comodie or Morral," it would seem to have been a severe satire on those Knaves who enrich themselves at the nation's expense: "Then for comedies, to speake of a London comedie, how much good matter, yea and matter of state, is there in that comedie cald the play of the cards? in which it is showed how foure Parasiticalle knaves robbe the foure principall vocations of the Realme, videlicet, the vocations of Souldiers, Scollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen. Of which comedie I cannot forget the saying of a notable wise counseller who is now dead (Sir Frauncis Walsinghame), who, when some (to sing Placebo) advised that it should be forbidden, because it was somewhat too plaine, and indeed, as the old saying is, Sooth boord is no boord, yet he would have it allowed, adding that it was fit that 'They which doe that they should not, should heare that they would not.'" [147]

The mention of a comedy shown before the Queen at Windsor by the children of her Majesty's Chapel, naturally suggests the recollection of John Lyly's Court Comedies, which were wont to be shown by the same children, as well as by the "children of Poules;" and as in one of those comedies,—Alexander and Campaspe,—Lyly has committed an anachronism with respect to cards, [148] an opportunity is thus afforded of here introducing the pleasantly conceited song that contains the error,—a song, which Elia would have encored, and which even Mrs. Battle herself would have allowed to be sung at the card table during the intermission of the game at the end of a rubber, when cutting in for new partners. [149]

"Cupid and my Campaspe play'd

At cards for kisses; Cupid paid:

He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,

His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;

Loses them too: then down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how);

With these the chrystal on his brow,

And then the dimple of his chin:

All these did my Campaspe win.

At last he set her both his eyes:

She won, and Cupid blind doth rise.

O Love, has she done this to thee?

What shall, alas, become of me!"

Before taking leave of the reign of Elizabeth, it seems proper to insert here what Philip Stubbes says about Cards, Dice, Tables, Tennis, and other games, in his 'Anatomie of Abuses.' [150] "As for Cardes, Dice, Tables, Boules, Tennisse, and such like," says the moral dissector, speaking in the person of Philoponus, "thei are Furta officiosa, a certaine kind of smothe, deceiptfull, and sleightie thefte, whereby many a one is spoiled of all that ever he hath, sometimes of his life withall, yea, of bodie and soule for ever: and yet (more is the pitie) these be the only exercises used in every mans house, al the yere through. But especially in Christmas time there is nothyng els used but Cardes, Dice, Tables, Maskyng, Mummyng, Bowling, and such like fooleries. And the reason is, thei think thei have a commission and prerogative that tyme to doe what thei list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But (alas) doe thei thinke that thei are privileged at that time to doe evill? the holier the time is (if one time were holier then another, as it is not) the holier ought their exercises to bee."

He, however, thinks that at some games, under certain circumstances, Christian men may play for the sake of recreation; for, in answer to the question of Spudeus, "Is it not lawfull for one Christian man to plaie with an other at any kinde of game, or to winne his money, if he can?" Philoponus thus replies: "To plaie at Tables, Cardes, Dice, Bowles, or the like, (though a good Christian man will not so idely and vainely spende his golden daies), one Christian with an other, for their private recreations, after some oppression of studie, to drive awaie fantasies, and suche like, I doubt not but thei may, using it moderately, with intermission, and in the feare of God. But for to plaie for lucre of gaine, and for desire onely of his brothers substance, rather then for any other cause, it is at no hande lawfull, or to be suffered. For as it is not lawfull to robbe, steale, and purloine by deceite or sleight, so is it not lawfull to get thy brothers goodes from hym by Cardyng, Dicyng, Tablyng, Boulyng, or any other kind of theft, for these games are no better, nay worser than open theft, for open theft every man can beware of; but this beying a craftie polliticke theft, and commonly doen under pretence of freendship, fewe, or none at all, can beware of it. The commaundement saieth, Thou shall not covet nor desire any thing that belongeth to thy neighbour. Now, it is manifest, that those that plaie for money, not onely covet their brothers money, but also use craft, falshood, and deceite to winne the same."—There are doubtless many card-players, who, conscious of their want of craft, can safely deny the truth of Stubbes's sweeping conclusion; but it is to be feared that most crafty players will not lose if they can avoid it, either by hook or by crook.

In the reign of James I, the game "went bonnily on." His son, Henry, Prince of Wales, who died in 1612, aged nineteen, used occasionally to amuse himself at cards, but so nobly and like himself, as showed that he played only for recreation, and not for the sake of gain. [151] James himself was a card-player; and his favorite game was Maw, which appears to have been the fashionable game in his reign, as Primero was in the reign of Elizabeth. His Majesty appears to have played at cards just as he played with affairs of State—in an indolent manner, requiring in both cases some one to hold his cards, if not to prompt him what to play. Weldon, speaking of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in his 'Court and Character of King James,' says: "The next that came on the stage, was Sir Thomas Monson; but the night before he was to come to his tryal, the King being at the game of Maw, said, 'to-morrow comes Thomas Monson to his tryal.' 'Yea;' said the King's card-holder, 'where if he do not play his master's prize, your Majesty shall never trust me.' This so ran in the King's mind, that at the next game he said he was sleepy, and would play out that set next night." From the following passage in a pamphlet, entitled 'Tom Tell-troath,' supposed to have been printed about 1622, [152] it would seem that the writer was well acquainted both with his majesty's mode of playing at cards, and with the manner in which he was tricked in his dawdling with state affairs: "In your Majestie's owne tavernes, for one healthe that is begun to your-selfe, there are ten drunke to the Princes your forraygn children. And, when the wine is in their heads, Lord have mercie on their tonges! Ever, in the very gaming ordinaries, where men have scarce leisure to say grace, yet they take a time to censure your Majestie's actions, and that in their oulde schoole terms. They say, you have lost the fairest game at Maw that ever King had, for want of making the best advantage of the five finger, and playing the other helpes in time. That your owne card-holders play bootie, and give the signe out of your owne hand. That hee you played withall hath ever been knowne for the greatest cheater in Christendome. [153] In fine, there is noe way to recover your losses, and vindicate your honour, but with fighting with him that hath cozened you. At which honest downe righte play, you will be hard enough for him with all his trickes."

The following verses, which might have been written by Tom Tell-troath himself, form part of an inscription beneath a caricature engraving of the same period, representing the Kings of England, Denmark, and Sweden, with Bethlem Gabor, engaged in playing at cards, dice, and tables with the Pope and his Monks. [154]

"Denmarke, not sitting farr, and seeing what hand

Great Brittayne had, and how Rome's loss did stand,

Hopes to win something too: Maw is the game

At which he playes, and challengeth at the same

A Muncke, who stakes a chalice. Denmarke sets gold,

And shuffles; the Muncke cuts: Denmarke being bold,

Deales freely round; and the first card he showes

Is the five finger, which, being turn'd up, goes

Cold to the Muncke's heart; the next Denmarke sees

Is the ace of hearts: the Muncke cries out, I lees!

Denmarke replyes, Sir Muncke, shew what you have;

The Muncke could shew him nothing but the Knave."

From the allusions to the five fingers and the ace of hearts, in the preceding extracts, it would appear that the game of Maw was the same as that which was subsequently called Five-Cards, for, in both games, the five of trumps—called the five fingers—was the best card, and next to that was the ace of hearts. [155]

From the frequent mention of cards by writers of the time of James I, it would appear that the game was as common a diversion with his Majesty's peaceable subjects, as it was with the fighting men who followed the banner of Wallenstein or Tilly in the Thirty-Years' War. Inordinate gaming in one country, according to certain authorities, was the result of long-continued peace and too much ease; according to others, it was the natural consequence of war; in England, the devil, finding men idle, gave them employment at cards and dice; and in Germany, where they were busy in the work of destruction, he encouraged them to play as a relaxation from their regular labours. Prodigals, in each country, lighted their candle at both ends: English gallants used to divert themselves with cards at the playhouse before the performance began; [156] and desperate hazarders in the imperial camp staked, on a cast at dice, their plunder, ere it had well come into their possession.

In the reign of James I, a controversy arose respecting the nature of lots, in which the lawfulness—"in foro theologorum"—of deciding matters by lot, and of playing at games of chance, such as cards and dice, was amply discussed. It was maintained by one party, that as lots were of divine ordinance, for the purpose of determining important matters, [157] and of so ascertaining, as it were, the divine will, their employment for the purpose of amusement, was a sinful perversion of their institution, and a disparaging of Divine Providence, which was thus made the arbiter of idle and immoral games. [158] In opposition to this opinion, the learned Thomas Gataker published his treatise, historical and theological, 'Of the Nature and Use of Lots,' in 1619. In this work he treats of casual events in general, and of the different kinds of lots, which he thus classes under three heads: 1, Lots which are commonly employed in serious affairs; 2, Lots which enter into games of chance; 3, Lots extraordinary or divinatory. The first are generally admitted to be innocent; but the third are absolutely condemned by Gataker, except when they are expressly required to be used by a revelation or a divine command. [159] With regard to lots of the second kind, he contends that they are neither prohibited in the Scriptures nor evil of themselves; though, like those of the first, they are liable to great abuse. The abuse he earnestly condemns; but at the same time shows that it is not a necessary consequence of the employment of lots in games of amusement. He also refutes the arguments of James Balmford, who, in a small tract which appears to have been first published about 1593, had maintained that all games of chance were absolutely unlawful. An account of the controversy on this subject, between Gataker on one side, and William Ames and Gisbert Voet on the other, will be found in the preface to the second edition of Barbeyrac's 'Traité du Jeu.' [160]

In the reign of James I, and in the early part of that of his successor, ere the discussion of political grievances had produced a decided effect on the public mind, the fashionable vices of excess in apparel, gaming, drinking, and smoking tobacco, were fertile themes of declamation with a certain class of reformers, both lay and clerical. Their denunciations of the vanity and wickedness of wearing fine clothes are merely variations to Stubbes's 'Anatomy of Abuses;' while their fulminations against tobacco are generally pitched in the somewhat loud key of King James's Counterblast. Their common-places against drunkenness and gaming, are, in general, "very common indeed,"—as Sir Francis Burdett said of a certain common lawyer, who, since his elevation to the peerage, has been convicted of a petty larceny on the literary property of Miss Agnes Strickland, and who seems to be an adept at Cribbage, though no card-player.

In a woodcut on the title-page of 'Woe to Drunkards,' a sermon preached by Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, 1627, the vices of that age are typically contrasted with the virtues of a former one. In the upper compartment we are shown what men were of old by the open Bible, the foot in the stirrup, and the hand grasping the lance; while in the lower, the degeneracy of their descendants is typified by the leg and foot, decorated with a broad silk garter and a large rosette; by cards and dice, and a hand holding at the same time a lighted pipe and a drinking cup with a cockatrice in it. Twenty years afterwards, these types would have been more strictly applicable, with the inscriptions merely transposed.

At what time the manufacture of cards was established in this country, has not been ascertained; though from their being included in an Act of Parliament of 1463, prohibiting the importation of sundry articles, as being injurious to native manufacturers and tradesmen, it would seem that there were card-makers in England even at that early period. [161] Barrington, referring to a proclamation of Elizabeth, and another of James I, says, "It appears that we did not then make many cards in England." In his paper in the 'Archæologia,' he gives a fac-simile of the cover of an old pack of cards, as a decisive proof that cards were originally made in Spain. On this cover was printed a wood engraving of the arms of Castile and Leon, together with a Club, a Sword, a Cup, and a piece of Money, the marks of the four suits of Spanish cards. To an inscription purporting that they were fine cards, made by Jehan Volay—"Cartas finnas faictes par Jehan Volay"—there was also added, in letters of a different character, either by a stencil, or by means of inserting a new piece of wood in the original block, the name "Edward Warman," probably that of the English vendor of the cards. The maker's name, Barrington reads, "Je (for Jean or John) Hauvola," and the final Y he mistakes for the Spanish conjunction "and." The whole of the inscription, he says, being rendered into English, runs thus: "Superfine cards made by John Hauvola, and (Edward Warman)," the last name being substituted for that of a former partner of John Hauvola. [162] Mr. Barrington's reading of the maker's name, Je. Hauvola, instead of Jehan Volay, and his then introducing Edward Warman into the firm, by means of the final Y, construed as a copulative conjunction, are fair specimens of the proofs and illustrations which he adduces in favour of his theory about Spanish cards.

Jean Volay, as I learn from Leber, [163] was one of the most celebrated French card-makers of the sixteenth century; at what time "Edward Warman" lived, whose name also appears on the cover, is not known; but Mr. Barrington says that a person of that name kept a stationer's shop somewhere about Norton Folgate, about fifty years before the date of his paper, that is about 1737. Any vogue that Spanish cards might have had in the more northerly countries of Europe, during the times of Elizabeth and James I, was probably owing rather to the circumstance of so many Spaniards being then resident in the Low Countries than to any superiority of the cards manufactured in Spain. Until a comparatively recent period, large quantities of cards used to be sent from Antwerp to Spain. [164]

From the following verses, in "The Knave of Harts his Supplication to the Card Makers," in Samuel Rowlands' satire entitled 'The Knave of Harts,' [165] 1612, it would appear that cards were then commonly manufactured in England, for it cannot be fairly supposed that the Knave's supplication was addressed to foreign card-makers. The foregoing cut, which is a fac-simile of that prefixed to the edition of 1613, shows the Knaves of Hearts and Clubs in the costume complained of.

"We are abused in a great degree,

For there's no Knaves so wronged as are we

By those that chiefly should be our part-takers:

And thus it is, my maisters, you card-makers,

All other Knaves are at their own free-will,

To brave it out, and follow fashion still

In any cut, according to the time,

But we poore Knaves (I know not for what crime),

Are kept in pie-bald suites, which we have worne

Hundred of years; this hardly can be borne.

The idle-headed Frenche devis'd us first,

Who of all fashion-mongers is the worst;

For he doth change farre oftner than the moone;

Dislikes his morning suite in th' after-noone.

The English is his imitating ape,

In every toy the tailors-sheares can shape,

Comes dropping after as the divell entices,

And putteth on the French-man's cast devices;

Ye wee (with whom thus long they both have plaid),

Must weare the suites in which we first were made.

• • • • •

How can we choose but have the itching gift,

Kept in one kinde of cloaths, and never shift?

Or to be scurvy how can we forbeare,

That never yet had shirt or band to weare?

How bad I and my fellow Diamond goes,

We never yet had garter to our hose,

Nor any shooe to put upon our feete,

With such base cloaths, 'tis e'en a shame to see't;

My sleeves are like some morris-dauncing fellow,

My stockings idiot-like, red, greene, and yellow:

My breeches like a paire of lute-pins be,

Scarce buttock-roome, as every man may see.

Like three-penie watchmen three of us doe stand,

Each with a rustie browne-bill in his hand:

And Clubs he holds an arrow, like a clowne,

The head-end upward, and the feathers downe.

Thus we are wrong'd, and thus we are agriev'd,

And thus long time we have beene unreliev'd.

But, card-makers, of you Harts reason craves,

Why we should be restrained, above all Knaves,

To weare such patched and disguis'd attire?

Answer but this, of kindnesse, we require.

• • • • •

Good card-makers (if there be goodness in you),

Apparell us with more respected care,

Put us in hats, our caps are worne thread-bare;

Let us have standing collers, in the fashion,

(All are become a stiff-necke generation);

Rose hat-bands with the shagged-ragged ruffe,

Great cabbage-shoostrings (pray you bigge enough),

French dublet, and the Spanish hose to breech it,

Short cloakes, old mandilions [166] (we beseech it);

Exchange our swords, and take away our bils,

Let us have rapiers, (Knaves love fight that kils);

Put us in bootes, and make us leather legs:

This Harts, most humbly, and his fellows begs."

In Rowlands' 'More Knaves Yet? The Knaves of Spades and Diamonds,' published after his 'Knave of Harts,' the Knaves of Spades and Diamonds are represented in a modernised costume, bestowed on them by the printer, and the favour is thus acknowledged.

"Our fellow Hartes did late petition frame,

To card-makers some better sutes to clayme,

And for us all, did speake of all our wronges:

Yet they, to whom redresse herein belongs

Amend it not, and little hope appeares.

I thinke before the conquest many yeares,

We wore the fashion which we still retaine:

But seeing that our sute is spent in vaine,

Weele mend our selves as meanes in time doth grow,

Accepting what some other friends bestowe.

As now the honest printer hath bin kinde,

Bootes and stockins to our legs doth finde,

Garters, polonia heeles and rose shooe-strings,

Which, somewhat, us two knaves in fashion brings;

From the knee downeward, legs are well amended,

And we acknowledge that we are befrended,

And will requite him for it as we can:

A knave some time may serve an honest man.

To do him pleasure such a chaunce may fall,

Although indeed no trust in knaves at all.

He that must use them, take this rule from mee,

Still trust a knave no further than you see.

Well, other friends I hope wee shall beseech

For the great large abhominable breech,

Like brewers hop-sackes; yet since new they be,

Each knave will have them, and why should not wee?

Some laundresse we also will intreate,

For bandes and ruffes, which kindnes to be great

We will confesse, yea and requite it too,

In any service that poore knaves can doe:

Scarffes we do want, to hange our weapons by,

If any punck will deale so courteously

As in the way of favour to bestow them,

Rare cheating tricks we will protest to owe them.

Or any pander with a ring in's eare,

That is a gentleman (as he doth sweare),

And will afford us hats of newest blocke,

A payre of cardes shall be his trade and stocke,

To get his lyving by, for lack of lands,

Because he scornes to overworke his handes.

And thus ere long we trust we shall be fitted,

Those knaves that cannot shift are shallow witted."

By a proclamation of Charles I, June, 1638, it was ordered that after the Michaelmas next all foreign cards should be sealed at London, and packed in new bindings, or covers. A few years later, it would appear that the importation of foreign cards was absolutely prohibited; for, in July, 1643, upon the complaint of several poor card-makers, setting forth that they were likely to perish by reason of divers merchants bringing playing-cards into the kingdom, contrary to the laws and statutes, order was given, by a committee appointed by parliament for the navy and customs, that the officers of the customs should seize all such cards, and proceed against the parties offending. [167]

When the civil war commenced, and the people became interested in a sterner game, card-playing appears to have declined. The card-playing gallant whose favorite haunts had been the playhouse and the tavern, now became transformed into a cavalier, and displayed his bravery in the field at the head of a troop of horse; whilst his old opponent, the puritanical minister, incited by a higher spirit of indignation, instead of holding forth on sports and pastimes and household vices, now thundered on the "drum ecclesiastic" against national oppressors; urged his congregation to stand up for their rights as men against the pretensions of absolute monarchy and rampant prelacy, and to try the crab-tree staff against the courtier's dancing rapier.

Among the numerous pamphlets which appeared during the contest there are a few whose titles show that the game of cards, though not so much in vogue as formerly, was still not forgotten. [168] The following are the titles of three of such pamphlets, all quartos, the usual form of the literary light infantry of the period. "Chartæ Scriptæ, or a New Game at Cards, called Play by the Booke, 1645."—"Bloody Game of Cards, played between the King of Hearts and his Suite against the rest of the pack, shuffled at London, cut at Westminster, dealt at York, and played in the open field."—"Shuffling, cutting, and dealing, in a game at pickquet, being acted from the year 1653 to 1655, by O. P. and others, 1659." [169] In a 'Lenten Litany,' a backward prayer for the Rump, written in the time of the Long Parliament, the appointment of three keepers to the great seal is thus commemorated:

"From Villany dressed in a doublet of Zeal,

From three Kingdoms baked in one Commonweal,

From a Gleek of Lord Keepers of one poor seal

Libera nos Domine." [170]

It was probably as much owing to the circumstance of regular playing-cards being in small request, as to any desire to promote learning, that we have the "Scientiall Cards" mentioned in the following title of a work, in which cards are made subservient to the purposes of instruction, and which appears to have been one of the earliest of the kind published in England. [171] "The Scientiall cards; or a new and ingenious knowledge grammatically epitomised, both for the pleasure and profit of schollers, and such as delight to recollect (without any labour) the rudiments of so necessary an art as grammer is, without hindering them from their more necessary and graver studies, offering them as a second course unto you. Which, in all points and suits, do represent your vulgar or common cards; so that the perfection of the grammer principles may hereby be easily attained unto, both with much delight and profit. Together with a key showing the ready use of them. Written by a lover of ingenuity and learning. And are to be sold by Baptist Pendleton at his house, near St. Dunstan's Church in the east, or by John Holden, at the Anchor in the New Exchange. 1651." Of those cards, or of the key, showing how they are to be used, I know nothing beyond what is contained in the title above given, which is preserved amongst Bagford's collections, Harleian MSS. No. 5947, in the British Museum. I, however, greatly suspect that the "lover of learning and ingenuity" who devised them, was specially employed for the purpose by the maker, Mr. Baptist Pendleton, who, sensible of the decline of his regular business, and noting the signs of the times, might think it both for his interest and credit to manufacture cards, which might serve indifferently for the purposes of instruction, but equally as well for play as "your vulgar or common cards," which were then in very bad repute. The Scientiall cards would appear to have been well adapted for the use of persons who wished to save appearances with the Puritans, and yet had no objection to play a quiet game with the profane.

In 1656 was published a little book intitled 'The Schollers Practicall Cards,' by F. Jackson, M.A., containing instructions by means of cards how to spell, write, cypher, and cast accounts; together with many other excellent and necessary rules of calculation, without either almanack or ephemeris. "I am persuaded," says the author in his preface, "that the cards, now in common use, may be reduced to such a way of use as may not only contribute to knowledge and good learning, but may also remove the scandall and abuse, which every tinker that can but tell his peeps [pips] exposeth them unto. To that end I have framed, for the recreation of sober and understanding people, that which (although in form they represent common cards) in the inside, as to the use that be made of them, affords profitable learning and honest recreation: and herein there is much difference; the common cards being meer fiction, like the foolish romances, not applicable to any morall, or anything to be learned by them that is laudable." His method, like all others of the same kind, may be interesting, from its complicated absurdity, to those who already understand what he proposes to teach; but must have formed an almost unsurmountable obstacle to the unlettered, unless they were previously well grounded in Gleek, Ruff, Post and Pair, Saunt, [172] Lodam, and Noddy,—the games to which he chiefly refers in his instructions.

William Sheppard, sergeant-at-law, a great stickler, during the ascendency of the Rump, for the reformation of the law and the correction of manners, thus sets forth certain grievances, and, like a good Samaritan, propounds a remedy for them in his work, entitled 'Englands Balme.' [173]

"It is objected,

"That there is no certain and clear law to punish prophane jesting, fidling, ryming, piping, juggling, fortune-telling, tumbling, dancing upon the rope, vaulting, ballad-singing, sword-playing, or playing of prizes, ape-carrying, puppet-playing, bear-baiting, bull-baiting, horse-racing, cock-fighting, carding, dicing, or other gaming; especially the spending of much time, and the adventuring of great sums of money herein.

"It is offered to consideration,

"That to the laws already made: 1. That it be in the power of any two justices of the peace to binde to the goode behaivour such as are offensive herein. 2. That they be, so long as they use it, uncapable of bearing any office in the commonwealth. 3. That all payments to the commonwealth be doubled on such persons."

His saintly delicacy, if not his Christian charity, is displayed in the following "grievance" and "remedy:"

"There are some other cases wherein the law also is said to be somewhat defective: as

"That there is no law against lascivious gestures, wanton and filthy dalliance and familiarity, whorish attire, strange fashions; such as are naked breasts, bare shoulders, powdering, spotting, painting the face, curling and shearing the hair; excess of apparel in servants and mean people.

"It is offered to consideration,

"1. That the justices of the peace at their Quarter Sessions >may binde any such to the good behaivour.

"2. That for a whorish attire, something of note be written upon the door of her house to her disgrace, there to continue till she wear sober attire."

The character of this puritanical reformer's liberality may be estimated by his proposed remedies for the abuses of the press. As his party were in power, there was no longer any occasion for free discussion. Milton was opposed to such canting reformers as Sheppard, and maintained the liberty of unlicensed printing.

"It is objected,

"That there are disorders in printing of books, for which there is no remedy.

"It is offered for this to consider of these things:

"1. That printing-houses be reduced to a number.

"2. That no books be printed but be first perused.

"3. That no dangerous books be printed here, carried beyond sea, and brought in hither.

"4. That the right of every mans copy be preserved.

"5. That every man shall licence his own book and be answerable for it."

On the accession of Charles II, a reaction took place; and people who had felt themselves coerced in their amusements by the puritanical party, seem now to have gloried in their excesses, not so much from any positive pleasure that they might feel in their vicious courses, but as evincing their triumph over those who formerly kept them in restraint. From the example of the king himself, a sensual, selfish profligate, vice became fashionable at court, where gross depravity of manners seems to have been admitted as prima facie evidence of loyal principles. His majesty's personal favorites, from the wealthy noble who had a seat at the council-table, to the poor gentlemen who served as a private in the horse-guards, seem all to have been eager to divert the "merry monarch" by their shameless profligacy. The man of ton of the period, was professionally a rake and a gamester, and often a liar and cheat; boasting of an intrigue with "my lady," while in truth he was kept by "my lord's" mistress; and pretending that he had won a hundred pieces of "the duke," at the groom-porter's at St. James's, when he had merely "rooked" a gay city 'prentice of five pounds at a shilling ordinary in Shire Lane. The morals and manners of the country, generally, at that period, are not, however, to be estimated by those of the court and the so-called "fashionable world." A numerous and influential class remained uncontaminated by their example; and laboured zealously to stem the torrent of vice which, issuing from the court, threatened to deluge the whole country. Though "the saints" no longer enjoyed the fatness of the land, they still exercised great influence over the minds of the middle classes, and fostered in them a deep religious feeling, and a strict observance of decency, which were in direct opposition to the principles and practice of the sovereign and his court. At no period of our history, do the profligacy of one class and the piety of another appear in more striking contrast. On looking closer, however, it would seem that this effect is, in a great degree, produced by the approximation of the extremes of each,—of sinners who painted themselves blacker than they really were, and of saints who heightened their lights and exalted their purity, while they were in truth but as "a whitened wall." A slight glance at the literature of the time of Charles II, will show that mankind do not become worse as the world grows older: the depravity which existed in his reign, is generally dwelt on by historians and moralists, though but few take the trouble of informing their readers that correctives for it, in the shape of good books, were at no period more abundant. For a picture of the manners of the time, we are referred to licentious plays and obscene poems, as if they formed the staple literature of the day,—as if all men frequented the playhouse and read Rochester, but never went to church or conventicle, nor read the numerous moral and religious works which then issued from the press. In the time of Charles II, the representation of plays was almost exclusively confined to London; and it may be questioned if even one of the licentious comedies of the period was represented on a provincial stage. The obscene books which were written in his reign for the entertainment of the fashionable world have sunk into disrepute, and are only to be found in the libraries of collectors of what are termed "Facetiæ;" while those of higher purpose are in constant demand, and are known to millions. More copies of Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' have been sold than of all the bad books that ever were written through the encouragement of Charles II and his courtiers.

But to come from this digression to the game we have in hand. Barrington, who is singularly unfortunate in his speculations about cards, and who seems to have been prone to draw general conclusions from special premises, says, that "Ombre was probably introduced by Catherine of Portugal, the queen of Charles II, as Waller hath a poem 'On a card torn at Ombre by the Queen.'" The game, however, was introduced before the arrival of the queen; for a work entitled the 'Royal game of Ombre' was published at London in 1660, [174] and Catherine did not arrive at Portsmouth till 14th May, 1662. Charles, on hearing of the queen's arrival, seems to have intrusted a right reverend prelate with a delicate commission: his majesty, according to Aurelian Cook, Gent., "having sent the Bishop of London thither before him to consummate the sacred rights of marriage, which was to be done in private." [175]

From the following passage in Pepys's Diary, under the date 17th Feb. 1667, it would appear that her majesty was accustomed to play at cards on a Sunday,—a crime of the greatest magnitude in the eyes of certain persons, who insist that the Christian Sunday should be observed like a Jewish Sabbath, and who yet have no objection to roast pig. [176] "This evening," says Mr. Pepys, "going to the Queene's side to see the ladies, I did finde the Queene, the Duchesse of York, and another or two, at cards, with the room full of ladies and great men; which I was amazed at to see on a Sunday, having not believed it, but, contrarily, flatly denied the same a little while since to my cosen Roger Pepys." The Duchess of York here mentioned, was Anne Hyde, first wife of James, Duke of York, afterwards James II. Her daughter, Mary, afterwards Queen of England, used also to play at cards on a Sunday, as we learn from the following passage in the diary of her spiritual director, Dr. Edward Lake, printed in the Camden Miscellany, vol. i, 1847: "Jan. 9. 1677-8. I was very sorry to understand that the Princess of Orange, since her being in Holland, did sometimes play at cards upon the Sundays, which would doubtless give offence to that people. I remember that about two years since being with her highness in her closett, shee required my opinion of it. I told her I could not say 'twas a sin to do so, but 'twas not expedient; and, for fear of giving offence, I advised her highness not to do it, nor did shee play upon Sundays while shee continued here in England." Card-playing on Sundays would appear to have been equally common with the select circle who had the honour of partaking of his majesty's amusements. Evelyn, in his Memoirs, writing on 6th Feb. 1685, the day when James II was proclaimed, says, "I never can forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine, &c., a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset [177] round a large table; a bank of at least £2000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflexions with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust!"

In the sixteenth year of the reign of Charles II an act was passed which might justly be entitled "An Act to legalise Gaming; to prevent wealthy Pigeons being plucked by artful Rooks, and to discourage Betting or Playing for large Sums upon Tick." An act of the same kind, passed in the reign of Queen Anne, was repealed in 1844, in consequence of its penalties being likely to fall heavy on some eminent sporting characters who had been so indiscreet as to receive sundry large sums in payment of bets lost to them upon credit. Its enactment and its repeal are significant indications of the state of the sporting world at the two respective periods. It seems to have been framed on a presumption that, in gaming, noble and wealthy sportsmen would be most likely to lose; and to have been repealed because certain noble and wealthy sportsmen had won, and received their bets. The parties in whose favour the act was repealed, were said to have been liable to penalties to the amount of £500,000: the law did not anticipate that lords and squires would be winners, nor intend that needy prosecutors should be enriched at their expense. The preamble and some of the provisions of the act of Charles II are here given as "Curiosities of Gambling Legislation."

"Whereas all lawful Games and Exercises should not be otherwise used than as innocent and moderate recreations, and not as constant trades or callings, to gain a living, or make unlawful advantage thereby; and whereas by the immoderate use of them many mischiefs and inconveniences do arise, and are dayly found to the maintaining and encouraging of sundry idle, loose, and disorderly persons in their dishonest, lewd, and dissolute course of life, and to the circumventing, deceiving, cousening, and debauching of many of the younger sort, both of the nobility and gentry, and others, to the loss of their precious time, and the utter ruin of their estates and fortunes, and withdrawing them from noble and laudable employments and exercises.

"Be it therefore enacted, that if any person or persons, of any degree or quality whatsoever, shall by any fraud, cousenage, circumvention, deceit, &c. in playing at Cards, Dice, Tables, Tennis, Bowls, Kittles, Shovel-board, or in or by Cock-fightings, Horse-races, Dog-matches, or Foot-races &c. or by betting on the sides or hands of such as play, win, obtain, or acquire any sum or sums of money or any other valuable thing; that then every person so offending shall ipso facto forfeit treble the sum or value of money, or other thing, so won, gained, or acquired.

"And for the better avoiding and preventing of all excessive and immoderate playing and gaming for the time to come, be it further enacted, that if any person shall play at any of the said games, or any other pastime whatsoever (otherwise than with and for ready money), or shall bet on the sides of such as play, and shall lose any sum of money or other thing played for, exceeding the sum of one hundred pounds, at one time or meeting, upon ticket or credit, or otherwise, and shall not pay down the same at the time when he shall so lose the same, the party who loseth the said moneys, or other things so played for, above the said sum of one hundred pounds, shall not, in that case, be bound or compelled to pay or make good the same; and that all Contracts, Judgments, Statutes, Recognizances, Mortgages, &c. made, given, acknowledged, or entered for security and payment of the same shall be utterly void and of none effect. And, lastly, it is enacted, that the person, or persons, so winning the said moneys, or other things, shall forfeit and lose treble the value of all such sum and sums of money, or other thing which he shall so win (above the said sum of one hundred pounds), the one moiety to the King, and the other to the Prosecutor." The passion for gaming at that period, and its consequences to wealthy flats, are thus described by Dryden:

"What age so large a crop of vices bore,

Or when was avarice extended more?

When were the dice with more profusion thrown?

The well-filled fob not emptied now alone,

But gamesters for whole patrimonies play:

The steward brings the deeds which must convey

The lost estate. What more than madness reigns,

When one short sitting many hundreds drains,

And not enough is left him to supply

Board wages, or a footman's livery?"

During the reign of Charles II, the business of card-making greatly increased in England: and the game appears to have been so generally understood as to induce many ingenious persons to employ cards not only as a means of diffusing useful and entertaining knowledge, but also of advertising their wares. The same mode of instruction was adopted about the same period in France; but in England it appears to have embraced a wider range of subjects; in France, scientific cards appear to have been devised for the exclusive use of the nobility and gentry, and to have been confined to their instruction in the conundrums of heraldry and the elements of history and geography; [178] while in England they were "adapted to the meanest capacity;" and in addition to the uses for which they were employed in France, were made subservient to the purposes of communicating knowledge in grammar, history, politics, morality, mathematics, and the art of carving.

A Mons. De Brainville invented at Lyons, about 1660, a pack of Heraldic cards, in which the Aces and Knaves, "les As et Valets," were represented by the arms of certain princes and nobles. Now as this was evidently a breach of etiquette and a derogation of heraldic nobility—Mons. De Brainville, like Mr. Anstis, does not seem to have rightly understood his own "foolish business" [179]—the plates were seized by the magistrates. As it appeared, however, that he had given offence through pure inadvertence, and not with any satirical intention, the plates were restored to him on condition of his altering the odious names of "As" and "Valets" into Princes and Chevaliers. In 1678 Antoine Bulifon carried the same kind of cards to Naples, where Don Annibal Aquaviva established a society to play at Blazon, under the name of "Armeristi," with the map of Europe for a device, and the motto, "Pulchra sub imagine Ludi." [180]

About the same time that Heraldic cards were introduced into Naples, a pack of the same kind as these of Mons. De Brainville were engraved in England. In these cards, specimens of which are given in the annexed plate, the honours of the several suits are thus represented. Each of the cards representing a Knave, is marked P, for Prince; and a stamp appears on the Ace of Spades.

In the annexed specimens, which are of the same size as the originals, the honours represented are the King of Clubs, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Diamonds, and the Ace of Spades. The arms of the Pope, representing the King of Clubs, are those of Clement IX, who was elected 20th June, 1667, and died 9th December, 1669.

In another pack of Heraldic cards, relating entirely to England, probably engraved about the same period, the armorial ensigns of the King and the nobility were thus distributed amongst the Têtes and Pips. [181] The King and Queen of Hearts were respectively represented by the arms of England and of the Duke of York; of Diamonds, by the arms of Ireland, and of Prince Rupert; of Spades, by the arms of France, and of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York; and of Clubs, by the arms of Scotland, and of the Dukes of Norfolk, Somerset, and Buckingham. In this pack there were no Knaves. The arms of the Earls were distributed amongst the sevens, eights, nines, and tens; the Viscounts furnished the sixes; the Bishops were quartered on the fives; and the Barons' coats armorial clothed the nakedness of the lower orders, from the fours to the aces,—the aces in the Heraldic game being low. From a kind of title-page, or perhaps wrapper, preserved in Bagford's collection, in the British Museum, it would appear that the publication of those cards was licensed by the Duke of Norfolk, as Earl Marshal of England, and as such entitled to take cognizance of all matters relating to heraldry.

The Pope, The Emperour
Castille & Leon, Eclesiasticks Dukes and Peirs (Reims, Longres, Laon)

In playing the game armorial with Heraldic cards, the players were required to properly describe the various colours and charges of the different shields; but as this could not be done without some previous knowledge of the science of heraldry, a Mons. Gauthier was led to devise, about 1686, a new pack of Heraldic cards, simply explaining the terms of blazon, and thus serving as an introduction to the grand game. [182] The Heraldic game, however, never was popular; and does not even appear to have been in much esteem with the higher orders, for whose instruction and entertainment it was specially devised. It would seem to have declined in France with the glory of Louis XIV, and not to have survived the Revolution in England.

About 1679, there was published a pack of cards, containing, according to the advertisement, "An History of all the Popish Plots that have been in England, beginning with those in Queen Elizabeth's time, and ending with the last damnable plot against his Majesty Charles II, with the manner of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's murder, &c. All excellently engraved on copper-plates, with very large descriptions under each card. The like not extant. Sold by Randal Taylor, near Stationers Hall, and by most booksellers, price One Shilling each pack." In a "puff collusive," [183] forming a kind of postscript to this announcement, approbation of these cards is thus indirectly made a test of staunch Protestantism. "Some persons who care not what they say, and to whom lying is as necessary as eating, have endeavoured to asperse this pack by a malitious libel, intimating that it did not answer what is proposed. The contrary is evident. Aspersers of this pack plainly show themselves popishly affected." [184]

Such a pack of cards as that announced in the advertisement referred to—"containing an history of all the popish plots that have been in England, beginning with those in Queen Elizabeth's time"—I have never seen; and from the objection which was made to it at the time, namely, that "it did not answer what was proposed," I am inclined to think that it was the same pack as that which relates entirely to the pretended Popish plot of 1678, and the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. A pack of the latter now before me appears to have been published about 1680, and certainly subsequent to the 18th of July, 1679; as on the Four of Clubs is represented the trial of Sir George Wakeman and three Benedictine monks, who on that day were arraigned at the Old Bailey on an indictment of high treason for conspiring to poison the king. The complete pack consists of fifty-two cards; and each contains a subject, neatly engraved, either relating to the plot or the trial and punishment of the conspirators, with a brief explanation at the foot. At the top are the marks of the suit; and the value of the low cards, from one to ten, is expressed in Roman numerals. The suits of Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs consist chiefly of illustrations of the pretended plot, as detailed in the evidence of Titus Oates and Captain Bedloe; while the suit of Clubs relates entirely to the murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey. An idea of the whole pack may be formed from the following description of a few of the cards of each suit. Hearts: King: the King and privy councillors seated at the council-table; Titus Oates standing before them: inscription at the foot, "Dr. Oates discovereth y^e Plot to y^e King and Councell." The Eight: "Coleman writeing a declaration and letters to la Chess,"—Père la Chaise. The Ace: the Pope with three cardinals and a bishop at a table, and the devil underneath: "The Plot first hatcht at Rome by the Pope and Cardinalls, &c." Diamonds: Knave: "Pickerin attempts to kill y^e K. in S^t James Park." The Four: "Whitebread made Provintiall." The Ace: "The consult at the white horse Taverne." Clubs: King: "Cap^t Bedlow examind by y^e secret Comitee of the House of Commons." The Nine: "Father Connyers preaching against y^e oathes of alegiance & supremacy." The Six: "Cap^t Berry and Alderman Brooks are offer'd 500£ to cast the plot on the Protestants." Spades: Queen: "The Club at y^e Plow Ale house for the murther of S. E. B. Godfree." The Nine: "S^r E. B. Godfree strangled, Girald going to stab him." The Five: "The body of S^r E. B. G. carry'd to Primrose hill on a horse."

Another pack of historical cards, apparently published in the same reign, but of inferior execution to the former, appears to have related to the Rye-house plot. As these cards are of even greater rarity than those relating to the Popish plot, the following description of four of them—all that I have ever seen—is here given as a stimulus to collectors. Queen of Hearts: "Thompson one of y^e conspirators taken at Hammersmith." Knave of Diamonds: "Rumbold the malster;" on a label proceeding from his mouth is the inscription, "They shall dye." Ace of Clubs: "Keeling troubled in mind:" on a label proceeding from his mouth, "King killing is damnable." Ace of Spades: "Hone taken prisoner at Cambridge." Shortly after the Revolution of 1688, one or two packs of cards appeared with subjects relating to the misgovernment of James II, and the birth of his son the Prince of Wales. In the reign of either Charles II or James II was published a pack of mathematical cards, by Thomas Tuttell, "mathematical instrument-maker to the King's most excellent Majesty." Those cards were designed by Boitard, and engraved by J. Savage; they represent various kinds of mathematical instruments, together with the trades and professions in which they are used. They were evidently "got up" as an advertisement. A few years afterwards, Moxon, also a mathematical instrument-maker, followed suit.

"It would be difficult," says Mons. Leber, "to name an elementary book of science or art, which had not a pack of cards as an auxiliary. Grammar, Rhetoric, Fable, Geography, History, Heraldry, the principles of Morals and Politics,—all these things, and many others besides, were to be learnt through the medium of play. The game of cards had served for the amusement of a royal lunatic; and similar games were comprehended in the plan for the education of one of our greatest kings. [185] —Though France had a large share in the dissemination of such treasures of knowledge, England showed herself not less diligent in working the same mine; if to us she owes the game of Piquet, it is from her own proper resources that she has endowed the culinary art with a game of a different kind, yet highly interesting considered in its relation to the play of the jaws, the most ancient and highly esteemed of all play. It was in December, 1692, that the London papers first announced to the world the invention of the game of Carving at Table. This precious announcement is conceived in the following terms: 'The Genteel Housekeeper's Pastime; or the mode of Carving at the table, represented in a pack of Playing Cards, with a book by which any ordinary capacity may learn how to cut up, or carve in mode, all the most usual dishes of flesh, fish, fowl, and baked meats, with the several sawces and garnishes proper to each dish of meat. Price 1s. 6d. Sold by J. Moxon, Warwick Lane.'" [186] In those cards the suit of Hearts is occupied by flesh; Diamonds by fowl; Clubs by fish; and Spades by baked meats. The King of Hearts presides over a sirloin of beef; of Diamonds over a turkey; of Clubs over a pickled herring; and of Spades over a venison pasty. A red stamp on the Ace of Spades belonging to a pack which I have had an opportunity of examining, contains the words "Six pence." If this was the duty on each pack, it was certainly great for the period.

In the reign of Queen Anne and that of George I, several packs of satirical and fanciful cards were published. A pack of the latter description, now in the possession of Thomas Heywood, Esq., of Pendleton, near Manchester, relates entirely to the subject of love. Each card is neatly engraved on copper; and, from the stamp on the Ace of Spades, it appears evident that they were manufactured and sold for the purposes of play. The subject of this card is a Cupid plucking a rose, with the inscription "In love no pleasure without pain," and the following verses at the foot:

"As when we reach to crop y^e blooming rose

From off its by'r, y^e thorns will interpose;

So when we strive the beauteous nymph to gain,

Y^e pleasures we pursue are mixed with pain."

All the other cards have, in the same manner, explanatory verses at the foot. The mark of the suit is placed at the top, to the left, and above it is engraved the value of the card, in Roman numerals. In the coat cards, the name of each,—King, Queen, or Knave—is engraved above the mark of the suit. This pack has been in the possession of Mr. Heywood's family for upwards of a century.

A pack of satirical cards, belonging to W. H. Diamond, Esq., Frith street, Soho square, appear to have been executed about the same time. Each subject has an explanatory couplet at the bottom, and the value of each in the game is indicated by a small card engraved at the top, to the left. As in the other pack, there is a red stamp on the Ace of Spades. All the subjects are coarsely engraved, though some of them display points of character very much in the style of Hogarth. In the Three of Spades there is a billiard-table, at which a gentleman is playing with a curved cue. The inscription is:

"Think not a losing gamester will be fair,

In the Ten of Spades, a Moorfields quack is seen pointing to his sign, with the inscription:

"To famed Moorfields I dayly do repair;

Kill worms, cure itch, and make y^e ladies fair."

In the Ace of Diamonds, a lady is seen showing her palm to a fortune-teller, with the inscription:

"How can you hope this Gipsey drabb should know

The Fates decrees, and who was made for you."

In the Four of Diamonds, a lady is seen exchanging some of her clothes for china ware, with an itinerant dealer. The inscription is:

"Your pockets, madam, surely are wondrous bare,

To sell your very clothes for china ware."

In the Ten of Diamonds, the interior of a shop is shown, with articles of plate on the shelves. A woman is standing behind the counter, on which are a box and dice, and in front are a lady and gentleman who seem to have just thrown. The inscription is:

"At Epsom oft these rafflings I have seen,

But assignation's what they chiefly mean."

In England, books containing instructions for playing at cards appear to have been first published in the reign of Charles II, to the great benefit, most assuredly, of all adepts who had acquired their knowledge by practice; for in card-playing, as well as in chemistry, the experienced manipulators have a great advantage over the merely book-learned when matters are brought to the test. The real science of play is not to be acquired by the study of books, but by frequent encounters across the table, with men, whose keenness ensures attention to the rules of the game. But, even with the knowledge thus acquired, the proficient will gain but little, unless he also be skilled in the discrimination of flats and sharps.

In 1670, an edition of a book entitled 'Wits Interpreter,' was enlarged with directions for playing the "Courtly Games of L'Hombre, Piquit, Gleek, and Cribbage;" and in 1674 appeared Cotton's "Compleat Gamester; or, Instructions how to play at all manner of usual and most Gentile games, either on Cards, Dice, Billiards, Trucks, Bowls, or Chess." This book was several times reprinted; and in an edition published in 1709, the following are enumerated as the principal games at cards: Piquet; Gleek; l'Ombre, a Spanish game; Cribbage; All-Fours; English Ruff and Honours, alias Slam; Whist; French Ruff; Five Cards; a game called Costly Colours; Bone-Ace; Put, and the High Game; Wit and Reason, a game so called; a Pastime called the Art of Memory; a game called Plain-Dealing; a game called Queen Nazareen; Lanterloo; a game called Penneech; Bankafalet; Beast; [187] and Basset. [188]

The game of Whist, or Whisk, as it seems to have been usually called, is unquestionably of English origin, and appears to have been popular long before it became fashionable.

"Let India vaunt her children's vast address,

Who first contriv'd the warlike sport of Chess;

Let nice Piquette the boast of France remain,

And studious Ombre be the pride of Spain;

Invention's praise shall England yield to none,

While she can call delightful Whist her own.

But to what name we this distinction owe,

Is not so easy for us now to know:

The British annals all are silent here,

Nor deign one friendly hint our doubts to clear:

Ev'n Hume himself, whose philosophic mind

Could not but love a pastime so refin'd:

Ungrateful Hume, who, till his dying day,

Continued still his fav'rite game to play; [189]

Tho' many a curious fact his page supplies,

To this important point a place denies." [190]

Barrington's observations on the introduction of the game into respectable company, are as follows: "Quadrille (a species of Ombre) obtained a vogue upon the disuse of the latter, which it maintained till Whisk was introduced, which now [1787] prevails not only in England, but in most of the civilized parts of Europe. [191] If it may not possibly be supposed that the game of Trumps (which I have before taken notice of, as alluded to in one of the old plays contained in Dodsley's Collection) is Whisk, I rather conceive that the first mention of that game is to be found in Farquhar's 'Beaux Stratagem,' which was written in the very beginning of the present century. [192] It was then played with what were called Swabbers, [193] which were possibly so termed, because they who had certain cards in their hand were entitled to take up a share of the stake, independent of the general event of the game. The fortunate, therefore, clearing the board of this extraordinary stake, might be compared by seamen to the Swabbers (or cleaners of the deck), in which sense the term is still used. Be this as it may, Whisk seems never to have been played on principles till about fifty years ago, when it was much studied by a set of gentlemen who frequented the Crown coffee-house in Bedford row: before that time it was confined chiefly to the servants' hall with All-Fours and Put."

From Mr. Barrington's own references it would appear to have been a favorite game with country squires about 1707, the date of the Beaux Stratagem; and occasionally indulged in by clergymen about 1728, the date of Swift's Essay on the Fates of Clergymen. Their example, however, seems to have been unable to retrieve it from the character of vulgarity, until it was seriously taken up by "a set of gentlemen," who appear to have commenced their studies at the Crown coffee-house, in Bedford row, just about the time that the Treatise on Whist, by "Edmond Hoyle, Gent.," was first published by Thomas Osborne, at Gray's Inn. The studies of such gentlemen, and the celebrity of their scientific instructor, are thus commemorated in the prologue to the 'Humours of Whist,' a dramatic satire quoted in the preceding page.

"Who will believe that man could e'er exist

Who spent near half an age in studying Whist;

Grew grey with Calculation,—Labour hard!—

As if Life's business centred in a card?

That such there is, let me to those appeal,

Who with such liberal hands reward his zeal.

Lo! Whist he makes a science; and our Peers

Deign to turn school-boys in their riper years;

Kings too, and Viceroys, proud to play the game,

Devour his learned page in quest of Fame:

While lordly sharpers dupe away at White's,

And scarce leave one poor cull for common bites."

Though Mr. Barrington has not assigned any grounds for supposing that Whist was the same game as that which was formerly called Trumps, or Trump, it is not unlikely that he was induced to suggest the possibility of their being the same from his having read, in 'The Compleat Gamester,' that Whist differed but little from the game called English Ruff and Honours, and in consequence of his having learnt, from Cotgrave's Dictionary, that Ruff and Trump were the same. [194] He says, in a note, that "In 1664, a book was published, entitled 'The Compleat Gamester,' which takes no notice of Whisk." Though it be true that "Whisk" is not named in the first edition of the book—printed in 1674, not 1664—yet the following passage, distinctly asserting that Whist was then a common game in all parts of England, appears in the second edition published in 1680.

"Ruff and Honours (by some called Slam), and Whist, are games so common in England, in all parts thereof, that every child almost, of eight years, hath a competent knowledge in that recreation; and therefore I am more unwilling to speak anything more of them than this, that there may be a great deal of art used in dealing and playing at these games, which differ very little one from the other." In the 'Memoirs of the most Famous Gamesters, from the reign of Charles II, to that of Queen Anne,' 1714, a sharper named Johnson, who was hanged in 1690, is mentioned as having excelled in the art of securing honours for himself and partner when dealing at Whist; and in the works of Taylor the Water-poet, printed in 1630, Whisk is mentioned among the games at which the prodigal squanders his money:

"The prodigalls estate like to a flux,

The Mercer, Draper, and the Silkman sucks:

The Taylor, Millainer, Dogs, Drabs, and Dice,

Trey-trip, or Passage, or the Most-at-thrice.

At Irish, Tick-tacke, Doublets, Draughts, or Chesse,

He flings his money free with carelessnesse:

At Novum, Mumchance, Mischance (chuse ye which),

At One-and-thirty, or at Poor-and-rich,

Ruffe, Slam, Trump, Noddy, Whisk, Hole, Sant, New-cut.

Unto the keeping of four Knaves he'll put

His whole estate; at Loadum or at Gleeke,

At Tickle-me quickly, he's a merry Greek;

At Primifisto, Post-and payre, Primero,

Maw, Whip-her-ginny, he's a lib'ral hero;

At My-sow pigg'd: but (reader, never doubt ye)

He's skill'd in all games, except Looke about ye.

Bowles, Shove-groat, Tennis, no game comes amiss,

His purse a nurse for anybody is;

Caroches, Coaches, and Tobacconists,

All sorts of people freely from his fists

His vaine expenses daily sucke and soake,

And he himself suckes only drinke and smoake.

And thus the Prodigall, himselfe alone,

Gives sucke to thousands, and himself sucks none." [195]

In an edition of 'The Compleat Gamester' of 1709, it is said that the game of Whist is so called from the silence that is to be observed in the play; and Dr. Johnson, from the manner in which he explains the term, seems to have favoured this opinion: "Whist, a game at cards, requiring close attention and silence." [196] The name, however, appears more likely to have been a corruption of the older one of Whisk. As the game of Whisk and Swabbers was nearly the same as that of the still older one of Ruff and Honours, it would seem that the two former terms were merely the ludicrous synonyms of the latter,—introduced perhaps about the time that Ruffs were going out of fashion, and when the Honours represented by the coat cards were at a discount. The fact that a game, so interesting in itself, should be so slighted, as it was, by the higher orders, from the reign of Charles II to that of George II, would seem to intimate that they were well aware of the ridicule intended to be conveyed by its popular name of Whisk and Swabbers. Looking at the conjunction of these terms, and considering their primary meaning, [197] there can scarcely be a doubt that the former was the original of Whist, the name under which the game subsequently obtained an introduction to fashionable society, the Swabbers having been deposed and the Honours restored.

In playing the game, Swabbers seem to have signified either the Honours, or the points gained through holding them. At the older game of Ruff and Honours, Ruff signified the Trump. It would appear that when the Ruff was called a Whisk, in ridicule of the Ruff proper, the Honours, or points gained through them were, "in concatenation accordingly, designated Swabbers." In the present day, a Parisian tailor calls, facetiously, the shirt-ruffle of a shopmate a damping clout; and Philip Stubbes, in his 'Anatomie of Abuses,' 1583, thus speaks of the ruffs of the gallants of his time: "Thei have great and monsterous ruffes, made either of cambricke, holland, lawne, or els of some other the finest cloth that can be got for money, whereof some be a quarter of a yarde deepe, yea some more, very few lesse: so that thei stande a full quarter of a yarde (and more) from their necks, hanging over their shoulder points instead of a vaile. But if Æolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his stormes, chaunce to hit upon the crasie barke of their bruised ruffes, then they goeth flip-flap in the winde, like ragges that flew abroode, lying upon their shoulders like the dishcloute of a slut."

In the reign of Queen Anne, card-playing seems to have attained its full tide in every part of civilized Europe. In England, in particular, it was at once fashionable and popular; Ombre was the favorite game of the ladies; and Piquet of the gentlemen, par excellence; clergymen and country squires rubbed on at Whist; and the lower orders shuffled away at All-Fours, Put, Cribbage, and Lanterloo. Subsequently some of the games may have been more diligently studied, and the chances more nicely calculated "on principles," but at no other time, either before or since, was card-playing more prevalent amongst people of all classes. The more pious indeed did their best to discourage the general passion for play; but their dissuasions appear to have produced but little effect; as indeed might be expected at a period when one of the first statesmen of the time piqued himself rather on his skill in gaming than on his political reputation, and when kind landlords, of the Sir Roger de Coverley school, used to send a string of hog's puddings and a pack of cards as a Christmas gift to every poor family in the parish. [198] The character of the statesman alluded to—Lord Godolphin, who died 1712, [199]—is thus sketched by Pope in his first Moral Epistle:

"Who would not praise Patricio's high desert,

His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart,

His comprehensive head! all interests weighed,

All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed?

He thanks you not; his pride is in piquette,

Newmarket fame, and judgement in a bet."

The following particulars relating to the manufacture of cards in the reign of Queen Anne, are derived from a broadside entitled "Considerations in relation to the Imposition on Cards, humbly submitted to the Hon. House of Commons." It is without date, but was certainly printed in the reign of Queen Anne, for the purpose of being circulated among the members of the House of Commons on the occasion of a proposal to lay a tax of sixpence per pack on cards. "Nine parts in ten of the cards now made," it is stated, "are sold from 6s. to 24s. per gross; and even these at 6s. will by this duty be subjected to £3 12s. tax. This, with submission, will destroy nine parts in ten of the manufacture; for those cards which are now bought for 3d. [per pack] can't then be afforded under 10d. or 1s. If any of your honours hope by this tax to suppress expensive card-playing, it is answered that the common sort who play for innocent diversion will only be hindered; the sharp gamesters who play for money will not be discouraged; for those who play for many pounds a game will not be hindered by 12d. a pack." There were then 40,000 reams of Genoa white paper annually imported, chiefly for the purpose of making cards. The business was in the hands of small masters, mostly poor, of whom there were no less than a hundred, in and about London. Their price to retailers, one sort of cards with another, was three halfpence a pack, and their profit not above a halfpenny. Though cards were at that period much smaller than they are at present, it is difficult to conceive how they could be manufactured at so low a price.

As Pope's description of the game of Ombre in the Rape of the Lock has been so frequently referred to by writers of all kinds,—whether treating, like Richard Seymour, Esq., on Court Games, or, like Miss Mitford, on Country Contentments, [200]—the omission of a reference to it here might be considered a gross oversight; but as it is impossible to go a pitch beyond the encomiums which have been bestowed on it, the following remarks by an old author may be introduced as a variation: "Mr. Pope, too, most certainly has his merit; yet the generality of polite men heed him little more than a pack-horse upon the road; they hear the jingle of his bells and pass on, without thinking of the treasure he carries. I have frequently thought it odd, that in all the good company I have kept, I never heard a line quoted from any part of him, unless, now and then, an accidental one, from his beautiful and accurate description of the game of Ombre." [201]

During the greater portion of the "Georgian Era" it would seem that cards were as much played at by all classes as in the reign of Queen Anne. In the early part of George I, Seymour published his 'Court Gamester,' written, as the title-page states, for the use of the young Princesses. [202] The only games of which Mr. Seymour treats are Ombre, Piquet, and the Royal Game of Chess. His instructions for playing at Ombre and Piquet are minute and precise, and have all the appearance of having been adapted for royal capacities. At cards with princesses, he may have been a master, in both senses of the word, and have played, in any company, a "decent hand;" but at Chess, it is evident, he was a mere novice,—"aut caprimulgus, aut fossor." Though, in the title-page, the work is said to have been written for the use of the young princesses, yet, in the preface, the author candidly acknowledges that he had been induced to compile it for the fashionable world at large, seeing that "gaming had become so much the fashion among the beau-monde, that he who in company should appear ignorant of the games in vogue would be reckoned low-bred and hardly fit for conversation." In his explanation of the Spanish terms employed in the game of Ombre, he is laudably precise; though when he renders the words, "No se deve, por Dios," by "It is not lost, by G—d," he seems wishful rather to give the spirit of the exclamation than the simple meaning of the phrase, and to be emphatic even at the risk of appearing profane. It is to be hoped that the princesses confined themselves to the original Spanish, and that they were ignorant that it contained an oath, supposing the objectionable English words to be merely added, elegantiæ causa, by their polite teacher.

About the time that Seymour's 'Court Gamester' was first published, a spirit of gambling seems to have pervaded all classes. Skill in the games at cards most in vogue was a test of gentility; stock-jobbing, or speculating for a rise or a fall in the public funds, had become a regular trade; and even pious ministers, of high dissenting principles, who looked on card-playing as sinful, scrambled as eagerly as the most profane for shares of South Sea stock, and were blinded to the sense of Christian duty by the dazzling hope of becoming suddenly rich. The South Sea bubble, however, at length burst, and its promoters and their dupes were appropriately caricatured in a pack of cards. [203] The South Sea directors, instead of having thousands of pounds presented to them by the shareholders, as a tribute to their speculative genius, were summoned before a parliamentary committee to give an account of their estates. Parliamentary committees have of late been employed for a purpose widely different:

" • • • • • multi

Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato:

Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit, hic diadema."

About 1737, Hoyle's 'Treatise on Whist' was first published. The work, which seems to have been admirably adapted to the wants of society at the time, was most favorably received; and in the course of the succeeding ten or twelve years it ran through as many editions as Lindley Murray's Grammar, in the same period, in modern times. It proved a "lucky hit," both for the author and the publisher, who took every precaution to secure their copyright: injunctions were held up in terrorem against pirates; and purchasers were informed that no copies of the work were genuine unless they bore the signatures of

The race of "Wits," who had previously exercised no small influence on the world of fashion, was then on the decline; the beau-monde had acquired the ascendency over Grub street; and gentlemen of rank and fashion formed themselves into clubs, for the purposes of gaming and social intercourse, from which thread-bare poets and hack pamphleteers were excluded by the very terms of subscription, to say nothing of the preliminary ordeal of the ballot. Those were the golden days of Beau Nash; when George the Second was king; and his son, the Duke of Cumberland, the patron of Broughton and Figg; when Cibber was Poet-Laureate, and when Quin's brutality passed for wit; when the Guards, the pride of the army, were such heroes as we see them in Hogarth's March to Finchley; and when such statesmen as Bubb Doddington had the entrée, by the back stairs, both at Leicester House and St. James's. Even those who professed to correct the vices of the age seem in some degree to have been infected with its spirit; Richardson, the novelist, writing with the ostensible design of reforming "Rakes" and retaining innocent young women in the paths of virtue, seems often to indulge, more especially in Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, in describing scenes and suggesting circumstances which only could have been conceived by a prurient imagination; and even John Wesley appears to have encouraged his poor converted sinners to exaggerate their petty vices, when speaking their experience at a love-feast, and to dwell, with a peculiar kind of complacency, on their former state of carnal wickedness as compared with their present state of spiritual grace,—just as William Huntington, S.S., when in the fulness of sanctity, dwelt on the memory of his former backslidings, and told all the world, with ill-dissembled pride, that his first-born love-begotten son was an exact copy of his father, both in humour and in person.

The reign of Beau Nash at Bath forms a "brilliant" era in the annals of ostentatious frivolity. Under his auspices the City of the Sick [204] became the favorite place of resort for the fashionable and the gay; and in the pools where formerly lepers alone washed to cleanse them of their sores, smooth-skinned ladies dabbled for pleasure, to the sound of soft music, while gentlemen, enraptured, looked on. [205] The Beau was admirably fitted, from his mercurial talents, to discharge the peculiar duties of purveyor of pleasure to the fashionable society of his age: he could administer flattery to a duchess while he pretended to reprove her; and could persuade the little madams, of the Would-be family, that they were honoured by his patronising condescension, at the very time that he was endeavouring to make them appear ridiculous, for the amusement of real ladies. He displayed great tact in bringing parties together who wished to be better acquainted, and denounced scandal as the bane of fashionable society. He promoted play as a recreation for the polite of both sexes; and encouraged dancing, not only as a healthy exercise per se, but for the benefit of the rooms, and for the sake of aiding the salutary operation of the waters. In his dress he was "conspicuously queer," as was requisite in a Master of the Ceremonies: he wore a large white hat,—cocked, be it observed,—the buckle of his stock before instead of behind, and, even in the coldest weather, his waistcoat unbuttoned, displaying the bosom of his shirt. He drove six greys in his carriage, and when he went in state to the rooms he was always attended by a numerous escort and a band of music, the principal instruments of which were French horns,—"Sonorous metal, blowing martial sounds." On his decease, which took place in 1761, the corporation of Bath, grateful for the benefits conferred on their city through his means, erected a marble statue of the Grand Master of the Ceremonies in the Pump-room, between the busts of Newton and Pope; and his good-natured friend, the Earl of Chesterfield, in an epigram, thus did justice to his memory and the taste of the corporation:

"The Statue, placed these busts between,

Gives Satire all its strength;

Wisdom and Wit are little seen,

But Folly at full length."

The Earl of Chesterfield was a frequent visitor at Bath, where he found many admirers of his wit, and many opportunities of exercising it. Bath, indeed, was the very place for such a genius to shine in, for in no other city in the kingdom were manners and morals, such as his lordship's, more highly appreciated. His lordship was fond of play too; and was partial to the company of Mr. Lookup, one of the most noted professional gamesters of the day. Lookup, as well as Colonel Charteris,—of notorious memory in the annals of gaming and debauchery,—was from the north of the Tweed. He was born in the neighbourhood of Jedburgh, and was bred an apothecary. On the expiration of his apprenticeship, he proceeded southward, and obtained a situation in the shop of an apothecary at Bath. On the death of his master, he wooed and won the widow; and having thus obtained possession of about five hundred pounds in ready money, he gave up the shop, and devoted himself entirely to play, an itch for which he is said to have brought with him from his native country. In Lookup's youth, and, indeed, for many years afterwards, a fondness for card-playing was more prevalent in Jedburgh than in any other town on the Scottish border.

Lookup, having determined to make gaming his business, devoted, like a sensible man, his whole attention to it: he calculated the odds coolly, played steadily, and, consequently, won considerably from those fashionable amateurs whose confidence was not according to knowledge. He was not only a proficient in all the usual games at cards, but also played well at billiards. Lord Chesterfield used sometimes to amuse himself at billiards with Lookup; and on one occasion had the laugh turned against him by a ruse of his antagonist, who, after winning a game or two, asked his lordship how many he would give if he were to put a patch over one eye. His lordship agreed to give him five; [206] and Lookup having won several games in succession, his lordship threw down his mace, declaring that he thought Lookup played as well with one eye as with two. "I don't wonder at it, my lord," replied Lookup, "for I have only seen out of one these ten years." The eye of which Lookup had lost the use appeared as perfect as the other, even to a near observer. With the money which he had at various times won of Lord Chesterfield, chiefly at Piquet, he built some houses at Bath, which he jocularly called "Chesterfield Row."

Lookup's gambling career, though successful, was not uniformly smooth; and on one occasion he got himself very awkwardly entangled in the meshes of the law. A gentleman, who had lost between three and four hundred pounds to Lookup at Cribbage, being persuaded that there had been "a pull" upon him, brought an action against Lookup for double damages, according to the statute made and provided for the special protection of the Tom-Noddy class of gamesters,—pitiful, whimpering, greedy fools, who call upon the world to commiserate their losses, though occasioned solely by their attempts on the purses of people more knowing, though not a whit more knavish, than themselves. In the course of some proceedings arising out of this action, Lookup, through the blunder of his attorney, it is said, swore to the truth of a circumstance which was subsequently proved to be false. Lookup was hereupon prosecuted for perjury, and imprisoned; and only escaped the pillory in consequence of a flaw in the indictment: the blunder of his own attorney brings him into peril, and the blunder of his opponent's sets him free; John a-Nokes's broken arm is a set-off against Tom a-Styles's broken leg; each party is left to pay his own costs, and thus the Law at least is satisfied. The oyster is swallowed, and the scales of justice are evenly balanced with a shell in each.

Lookup, like his contemporary, Elwes the miser, who was also a great card-player, frequently lost large sums by projects which he was allured to engage in by the tempting bait of a large return for his capital; a corrective occasionally administered by fortune to her spoiled children when they leave their old successful course of retail trickery, to embark as merchant adventurers on the sea of speculation. But though fortune frowned on him when he gave up gaming as a regular profession, to become the principal partner in a saltpetre manufactory at Chelsea, she yet looked favorably on some of his other speculations which were more in accordance with his old vocation: the shares which he held in several privateers, in the French war from 1758 to 1763, paid well; and he was highly successful as an adventurer in the slave trade. He is said to have died "in harness, "—that is, with cards in his hand,—when engaged in playing at his favorite game of Humbug, or two-handed Whist. Foote—who is supposed to have represented him in the character of Loader, in the farce of the Minor—is said to have observed, on learning the circumstances of his death, that "Lookup was humbugged out of the world at last." He died in November, 1770, aged about seventy. His biographer thus sums up his character: "Upon the whole, Mr. Lookup was as extraordinary a person as we have met with for several years in the metropolis. He possessed a great share of good sense, cultivated by a long acquaintance with the world; had a smattering of learning, and a pretty retentive memory; was fluent in words, and of a ready imagination. We cannot add, he was either generous, grateful, or courageous. In his sentiments, his cunning, and his fate, he nearly resembles the famous Colonel Charteris; a Scotchman by birth, and a gamester by profession, he narrowly escaped condign punishment for a crime that was not amongst the foremost of those of which he probably might be accused." [207] Had he lived in the railway era, he would, most assuredly, have been either a king or a stag royal:

"The craven rook and pert jackdaw,

Although no birds of moral kind,

Yet serve, when dead, and stuffed with straw,

To show us which way points the wind."

The reign of George II is a historical picture of "great breadth," abounding in strongly marked characters, strikingly contrasted; but chiefly undignified, and generally low. The Carnal man is a ruffian rioting in Gin Lane; whilst the Spiritual is typified by a sinister-looking personage, with lank hair, cadaverous visage, and a cock-eye, preaching Free Grace from a tub to a miscellaneous company at Mile-end Green,—the indifference of the unregenerate being indicated by a prize fight in the background. Here a poor rogue is going, drunk, to Tyburn, for having robbed a thief-taker's journeyman of a silver watch, a steel chain, and a tobacco-stopper,—worth altogether forty shillings and threepence, the value required by law to entitle the thief-taker to his price of blood; and there a wealthy soap-boiler, who has made a fortune by cheating the excise, is going in state to Guildhall as Lord Mayor of London. Here a young rake is making violent love to his mother's maid, who has been induced to encourage his attentions from her reading Pamela; and there his aunt, a maiden lady of fifty-two, but having in her own right three thousand a year, is complacently listening to the matrimonial proposals of a young New-light preacher. Here is Colley Cibber sipping his wine at the table of "my lord;" and there sits Samuel Johnson, behind the screen in Cave's back shop, eagerly devouring the plate of meat which the considerate bookseller has sent him from his own table. Here are Johnny Cope and the dragoons riding a race from Preston Pans; and there sits the young Chevalier, unkempt and bare-legged, smoking a short pipe in a Highland hut. Here hangs the sign of the Duke of Cumberland's head; and there, grinning down on it from the elevation of Temple Bar, are the heads of the decapitated rebels. Here Ranelagh is seen shut up on account of the earthquake at Lisbon; [208] and there a batch of gambling senators are hurrying down to the House from the club at White's, to give their votes in favour of a bill to repress gaming.

The several acts passed against gaming, in the reign of George II, appear to have had but little effect in restraining the practice, either at the time, or in any subsequent reign; for though occasionally a solitary loose fish might become entangled in their meshes, they never interrupted the onward course of the great shoal.

The shameless inconsistency of many of the noble lords and honorable gentlemen who were parties to the enactment of those laws, is cleverly shown up in an ironical pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Club at White's. In which are set forth the great Expediency of repealing the Laws now in force against Excessive Gaming, and the many Advantages that would arise to this Nation from it. By Erasmus Mumford, Esq.," 1750. The following passages appear most worthy of transcription, both as showing the composition of a celebrated club about a hundred years ago, and as containing the pith of the writer's argument.

"The pertinency of my address to you, my Lords and Gentlemen, on this occasion, must be evident to every one that knows anything of your history; as that you are a Club of about Five Hundred, much the greatest part of you Peers and Members of Parliament, who meet every day at a celebrated Chocolate House, near St. James's, with much greater assiduity than you meet in the Court of Requests; and there, all party quarrels being laid aside, all State questions dropped, Whigs and Tories, Placemen and Patriots, Courtiers and Country Gentlemen, you all agree for the good of the Public, in the salutary measures of excessive gaming. But then as this is against laws of your own making, though now become old-fashioned, musty things, it would save appearances a little to the world methinks, that they should be repealed in the same solemn form in which they were enacted. And as you are, by yourselves and your relations, a great majority of the Legislature, and have no party bias whatsoever on this article, so it would certainly be as easy for you, as it is, in my opinion, incumbent on you, to accomplish such a repeal.... For, whatever we mean in our hearts, the forms of government should be carefully preserved; and though gaming is of the highest advantage to this nation, as I shall presently make appear, yet to practise it in defiance of all order, in the very sight, as it were, of the Government, and against the spirit and letter of the laws which you made yourselves, is entirely inconsistent with the character of Patriots, Nobles, Senators, Great Men, or whatever name of public honour you would chuse to call yourselves by.

"Besides, we have some odd queer maxims in our heads, that the Law is the same for the King and the Cobler, &c., nor is there in any Act of Parliament that has come to my knowledge, any exception of this same house called White's and the good company who frequent it. If you have any act against Gaming with any such exception in it, be so good as to produce it; for I believe verily that, besides yourselves, there is not a man in the kingdom who knows any thing of it. I have read the last Act over and over, and I protest that I can't see any such thing; and yet I don't know how to persuade myself that so many noble Lords and so many of the House of Commons, of all parties and denominations, should every day meet together in open contradiction to such an Act, without a saving clause to shelter themselves under.—

"But though it does no other harm at present, yet still it continues to be an act of the Lords and Commons of the kingdom, (of which you, to your eternal praise, are a great part,) and which has had the Royal assent. And whilst it does so continue, it not only hinders the rest of the kingdom, who are so silly as to mind Acts of Parliament, from Gaming, but it prevents a scheme, which I have had in my head for some time, from taking place; which is, that you should use your utmost endeavours with his Majesty, that he would be pleased, in consideration of the great good of his people, to give neither place nor pension to any Peer, howsoever deserving in all other respects, who is not of your body; and that a Bill should be brought in to render every one incapable of sitting as a member in either House of Parliament, how sound soever his political principles may be, who is not likewise a member of the Gaming Club at White's. This, I apprehend, would be an effectual way of introducing this wholesome innocent diversion into every house of Fashion and Politeness in the kingdom, and make your illustrious body more in vogue, if that can be, than it is at present.—

"But this scheme, which I apprehend to be of such great utility, can never be executed whilst these Acts of Parliament remain unrepealed.... There is one difficulty indeed which I am aware of, which, as I don't know how to get over very well myself, I must submit to your greater wisdom; and that is, getting the king and his chief ministers to consent. For as to the former, though he allows of the practice in his palace once a year, from mere antient custom, [209] yet it is well known that he discourages it very much; and the moment he heard of a table at his house at Kensington, sent immediate orders to forbid it. And as to the Secretaries of State, though they have this diversion once a year or so at their houses, for the entertainment of the Foreign Ministers, yet they never play themselves, nor show any other countenance to it, directly nor indirectly." [210]

In the political pamphlets which appeared in opposition to the ministry in the latter part of the reign of George II, the club at White's is frequently alluded to; and in 'A Political and Satirical History of the years 1756, 1757, 1758, 1759, and 1760, in a series of one hundred and four Humourous and Entertaining Prints,' [211] the gaming propensities of Lord Anson, the circumnavigator, who was at the same time a member of the club and of the government, are keenly satirised. In Plate 7 he is represented as a Sea Lion, with the body of a man and the tail of a fish; in one hand he holds a dice-box, and in the other a card; and on the wall are two pictures, the one showing an E.O. table, and the other a table covered with money, with the inscription "Blacks and Whites." In another print he figures as the Knave of Diamonds, with the inscription at the top, "Hic niger est;" and at the bottom, "Acapulca." In the Key prefixed to the work the person represented is thus denounced: "This caricatura's propensity to gaming tells us at once how valuable he must be to a shipwrecked state, and that he deserves (like a drunken pilot in a storm) to be thrown overboard, to make room for one of clearer brains and more integrity." The three other Knaves are: Spades, inscribed "Monsr. Dupe;" and in the Key it is said that, by the flower-de-luces, seen on the ground, is expressed, "how much this caricatura was connected with our enemies, and was even a Dupe to them against the interests of his country." Hearts, with a fox's head, and inscribed "Monsr. Surecard:" in the Key it is said that this character "infers, by the sharpness of the nose, that craft and subtilty which is natural to creatures of a similar kind, known by the name of Foxes, and is here pointed out as a Knave." Clubs, with a broken yoke in his hand, and inscribed "Null Marriage:" the Key says, "this caricatura was esteemed the most atrocious Knave in the pack, and the worst of the black sort."

Another plate in the same series of caricatures displays the gamester's coat of arms. The shield is charged with cards, dice, and dice-boxes, and is surrounded by a chain, from which hangs a label inscribed "Claret." Supporters, two Knaves. Crest, a hand holding a dice-box. Motto, "Cog it Amor nummi." In Plate 90, of which a copy is here given, the principal performers figuring on the political stage in 1759 are represented as coat cards. [212] In the suit of Hearts, the King, Optimus, is George II; Queen, Britannia; Knave, Pitt. Diamonds, King, the King of Prussia; Queen, the City of London; Knave, Prince Ferdinand. Spades, King, the King of Poland; Queen, the Queen of Hungary; Knave, Holland. Clubs, King, the King of France; Queen, Gallia; Knave, Marshal Broglie. In the Key it is said that "the labels and characters here represented are sufficient to explain the meaning of the print, with the least application."

The Court Cards of 1759 or Hearts is Trump & has won the Game.

In a work relating to the authorship of Junius's Letters, [213] the following account is given of the volume of caricatures in question. It is not, however, correct in every point; for though it may be true that the earlier plates were at first privately distributed, it is certain that subsequently they were publicly sold. The first collection of them, published in a volume, consisted only of the caricatures for 1756-7; and appears to have been enlarged from time to time, by the addition of such plates as had been published separately in the preceding year. The edition of the first volume which I have consulted, containing the plates from 1756 to 1760, is the fifth,—a proof that latterly those caricatures were not privately distributed, whatever they might have been at the commencement. Though Lord George Townshend might have supplied the publisher with sketches or hints, [214] for some of the subjects, and even have suggested the publication of the series, it would be absurd to conclude that he was the designer of the whole. There are only four subjects in the volume relating to Lord George Sackville; and they are among the most worthless of the series, both with respect to conception and design.

"Soon after the unfortunate misunderstanding at Minden, Lord George Townshend (who had formerly been on friendly terms with Lord George Sackville, particularly at the battle of Dettingen) joined with the court party in publicly censuring his conduct. He had an ingenious turn for drawing, and he even went so far as to caricature Lord George flying from Minden, which, with many others, he privately circulated among his friends. This book of caricatures, bearing date from 1756 to 1762, is extremely curious. As they were privately distributed, they are, of course, seldom to be met with. I never saw but one complete set, now in the possession of W. Little, Esq., of Richmond, who has obligingly allowed me to copy the one in question, which is submitted to the reader's inspection. We have Lord Orford's testimony to prove that this book was the production of Lord George Townshend. Lord Orford has described the first of the series, vol. ii, p. 68, 'A new species of this manufacture now first appeared, invented by Lord George Townshend; they were caricatures on cards. The original one, which had amazing vent, was of Newcastle and Fox, looking at each other, and crying with Peachum, in the Beggar's Opera, 'Brother, brother, we are both in the wrong.' On the Royal Exchange a paper was affixed, advertising 'Three kingdoms to be let: inquire of Andrew Stone, broker, in Lincoln's Inn Fields.'—The whole series forms a curious collection. Those on Lord George Sackville were very severe."

The example set by the club at White's appears to have been much more influential in promoting gaming than the denunciation of an Act of Parliament to have been effective in repressing it: the letter of the act was, indeed, killing, but the spirit of the legislators, as displayed at White's, kept the game alive. New clubs of the same kind,—on the principle of mutual insurance against informers,—were established in the metropolis; and even in the provinces, country gentlemen and tradesmen, becoming aware of the advantages of the social compact, formed themselves into little clubs for the purpose of indulging in a quiet game at cards or dice. Card-playing about the same time, or a little later, was greatly promoted by the establishment of assembly-rooms in country towns, where cock-fighting squires, after attending the pit in the morning, might enjoy in the evening the more refined amusements of dancing and cards. [215] The example set by the higher classes was followed by the lower; and at a "merry night" in a Cumberland village, some fifty years since, cards were as indispensable as at an assize ball in the county town: with the exception of the dress of the company and the arrangement of the rooms, the one assembly, at the commencement at least, seems to have displayed all the essentials of the other.

"Ay, lad, see a murry-neet we've had at Bleckell!

The sound o' the fiddle yet rings i' my ear;

Aw reet clipt and heeled were the lads and the lasses,

And monnie a clever lish hussey was there:

The bettermer sort sat snug i' the parlour;

I' th' pantry the sweethearters cuttered sae soft;

The dancers they kicked up a stour i' the kitchen;

At lanter the caird-lakers sat i' the loft. " [216]

The passion for card-playing appears to have been extremely prevalent in the earlier part of the reign of George III. [217] In almost every town where there is an assembly-room, traditional anecdotes are handed down of certain keen players keeping up the game for twenty-four successive hours, till they were up to their knees in cards; and there is scarcely a county in England that has not a story to tell of two or three of its old landed gentry being ruined at cards by the Prince of Wales. Even villages have their annals of gaming; of once substantial farmers turning horse-coursers and riding headlong to ruin on a leather plater; of others going more quietly off at cards, staking their corn before it was housed; and of certain desperate cock-fighters losing their whole substance at a single match, and then straightway hanging themselves in their own barn. The love of card-playing, to the great horror of the inordinately pious, seems even to have infected ladies who were, in other respects, irreproachable:—good wives, affectionate mothers, teaching their children the Catechism, going regularly to church on Sundays, and taking the sacrament every month; yet, alas! dearly loving a snug private party of four or five tables, and immensely fond of Quadrille; and making but a poor atonement for their transgression by never touching a card in Passion week, nor the night before the Communion, nor even on the Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent,—whenever they could avoid playing, "consistently with good manners." [218]

A discourse against gaming, preached in 1793, by Dr. Thomas Rennell, Master of the Temple, seems to have made much noise about the time, but no converts. The most original passage in the work is the following, wherein he asserts that the habit of card-playing renders the mind insensible of Gospel evidence: in the present day, it may be observed in passing, that a similar effect has been ascribed to the study of Oriel-college logic. "The mind of one immersed in cards soon becomes vacant, frivolous, and captious. The habits form a strange mixture of mock gravity and pert flippancy. The understanding, by a perpetual attention to a variety of unmeaning combinations, acquires a kind of pride in this bastard employment of the faculty of thought, which is so far from having any analogy to the real exercise of reason, that we generally find a miserable eminence in it attainable by the dullest, the most ignorant, and most contemptible of mankind. The gamester, however, frequently mistakes this skill for general acuteness, and from that conceit either totally rejects the Gospel evidence, or if political or professional considerations render this indecent or inexpedient, he harbours all that contemptible chicane, all that petty sophistry, all that creeping evasion, with which a selfish heart, and a contracted understanding, meets and embraces the prevailing heresy of the times in which we live." [219]

The following appears to be levelled at an individual of no small reputation in his day, and whose memory is likely to outlast Dr. Rennell's. "What is it that converts those designed by Providence to be the GUARDIANS and PROTECTORS into the BANE and CURSE of their country? I will answer, the GAMING TABLE. The reverses here every moment occurring unite beggared fortunes, mortified pride, callous baseness, and inflamed appetites, directing their joint operations to the destruction of that common mother which gave them birth. And here I wish to be rightly understood—that with a frugal, active, dignified poverty, the discharge of public duty is perfectly compatible. Such a poverty was highly reverenced in the best ages of Pagan antiquity, as the nurse of every great and useful exertion; but as distant as light from darkness is such a poverty from that degraded, malevolent, abject MENDICITY, the offspring of vice, the organ of faction, and the parent of universal prostitution and venality."

Dr. Parr, in his copy of this discourse, wrote the following note, which may serve as a tail-piece to the present chapter: "Dr. Rennell is said, with his own hand, to have put a copy of this animated sermon under the knocker of Mr. Fox's door in South street. I could wish the story to be untrue. But the eloquent preacher did not employ his great talents in a sermon against Sabbath-breaking, though his illustrious patron, Mr. Pitt, had lately fought a duel with Mr. Tierney on Wimbledon Common."

FOOTNOTES:

[109] Heller, Vom Ursprung der Spielkarten, in der Geschichte der Holzschneidekunst, s. 307.

[110]

"Interim vero jocis et ludo, minime concito, vacandum, ne sensus cogitatione occupati concoctionem impediant. Careat jocus (quem urbanum, facetum, modestum volo) dicacitate, scurrilitate, mordacitate. Nolo mimos; non proterviam; non dicteria; non convicia, unde ira et indignatio, et plerumque magna rixa oritur. Ludus sit talis, tessera, saccho (ut nostra appellatione utur), carthis variis imaginibus pictis. Absit inter ludendum omnis fraus et avaritia, qua illiberalior et destestandus fit ludus, nec ullam affert ludenti voluptatem; cum timor, ira, et immensa habendi cupiditas variis modis ludentes cruciet."

The first edition of Platina's treatise, De Honesta Voluptate, appeared at Venice, 1475. The preceding extract is from the second edition, printed in 1480.—Platina was born in 1421, and died in 1481.

[111]

"Non mirum ergo ob hujus planctæ excellentem prærogativam si in taxillis felicem jactum, non Jovem qui major fortuna putatur, sed Venerem nuncupavit antiquitas. Unde Propertius,

Me quoque per talos Venerem quærente secundos,

Semper damnosi subsiliere Canes.

Canem vero et Caniculam damnosum jactum etiam siderum comparatione appellaverunt. Sic Persius:

• • • • • Damnosa canicula quantum

Raderet.

Canis vero et canicula qualia sint sidera superius patuit. Sed forsitan quidam riderent hujuscemodi ludorum inventionem, doctis quoque viris tribui, nisi et ludum quem chartarum nominant vulgò et à sapientibus fuisse excogitatum ratio dictaret; nam, ut regum, reginarum, equitum peditumque potentiam præteream (quilibet enim dignitatis militiæque differentiam novit), nonne cum ensium, hastarum, scyphorum, paniumque agrestium vim consideramus, perspicacissimi ingenii inventorem esse cognoscimus? Cum viribus ubi est opus, ut in hastis ensibusque videtur, multitudo superat paucitatem: in esculentis vero poculentisque, ut per panes vinumque figuratur, paucitas multitudinem vincit; constat enim abstemios crapulosis edacibusque viris acrioris esse ingenii, et in negotiis agendis fore superiores. Panes autem rusticos voco, propter formam et colorem, croceo enim colore olim fuisse Plinius narrat, (nam cuppæ scyphi sunt, ubi vinum,) et illi sunt panes, quos imperite nummos credunt. Hastas, sic dixit vulgus, quoniam H aspiratio et V convertantur, ut Hesper, Vesper. B autem et V sibi invicem sedem præbere Græcus Latinusque testantur; ut Bastoni Hastoni vulgò appelleutur, ita ut aliquando hastarum plerumque bipennium formam gerant; utrumque enim militiæ; instrumentum est."—Galeottus Martius, De Doctrina Promiscua, cap. xxxvi, pp. 477-8. 16mo, Lyons, 1552.

[112] Anderson's History of Commerce, vol. i, p. 483.—The passage relating to cards, in the act referred to, was pointed out to the Hon. D. Barrington by Mr. John Nichols. Gough, in his 'Observations on the Invention of Cards,' in the Eighth Volume of Archæologia, says, that Mr. Le Neve produced before the Society of Antiquaries a minute to show that cards were manufactured in England before the 1st of Edward IV; for then a person had his name from his ancestor having been a card-maker. Mr. Gough observes that the ancestor of this person—Hugh Cardmaker, prior of St. John the Baptist, at Bridgenorth—was probably a maker of cards for dressing flax or wool. A Karter—a wool-comber—occurs in the town-books of Nuremberg, in 1397.

[113] Fenn's Paston Letters, vol. ii, p. 333, edit. 1778.

[114] "The kynge came privily to the said castell [of Newbattle], and entred within the chammer with a small company, where he founde the quene playing at the CARDES."—Leland's Collectanea, vol. iii, Appendix, p. 284. Cited by Warton, in his History of English Poetry, who also observes that cards are mentioned in a statute of Henry VII, in the year 1496.

[115] Private Life of James IV of Scotland, in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Nos. 9 and 10, 1832.

[116] "Les cartes, comme tout ce qui tient aux arts, out une origine Italienne: c'est à Venise ou à Florence que les Grecs réfugiés de Constantinople les ont d'abord fait connaître."—Annuaire Historique pour I'année 1837, p. 188.

[117] Ducange, Glossarium ad Scriptores mediæ; et infimæ Græcitatis. Folio, 1688. Under the words Αζαρια and Χαρτια. Ταυλια is merely a different mode of spelling ταβλια—tabulæ, tables, a kind of backgammon board with its appendages.

[118] The following is Mons. Brunet's prefatory note to his brochure, which was published at Paris, in 1842. "Les curieux, les amateurs de livres recherchent avec empressement tout ce qui a rapport aux cartes; c'est ce qui m'a porté à consacrer un instant de loisir à la traduction de ce que je venais de lire, à cet égard, dans un ouvrage allemand, vaste répertoire de I'érudition bibliographique la plus étendue (Lehrbuch einer Literargeschichte der berühmtesten Volker des Mittelalters, von J.G.T. Grasse, Dresden und Leipsig, Arnoldische Buchhandlung, 1842, Band II, s. 879-85); j'ajoute quelques indications nouvelles à cet aperçu, que je n'imprime d'ailleurs qu'à quelques exemplaires."

[119] Geiler's second bell—his peal consists of seven—rings to this tune. "Secunda nola est: ludcre alea dissimilibus. Tangit hæc nola feminas nobiles et sacerdotes: feminas, inquam, quæ immiscent se turbis virorum et cum eis ludunt, contra c. ii de judiciis, lib. vi; sacerdotes et prelatos ludentes cum laicis,—laici sunt clericis oppido infesti, unde scandalizantur; nobiles qui ludunt cum nebulonibus et lenonibus, ut in speculo nostro vulgari habes."—Speculum Fatuorum, auctore Joanne Geiler de Keisersberg, concionatore Argentorense, sect. LXXVII. Lusorum turba (Spiel Narre). Edit. Strasburg, 1511. It may here be observed that Geiler's bells are intended by himself for the caps of "Spiel Narre"—gambling fools.

[120] "Logica Memorativa: Chartiludium logice, sive dialectice memoria; et novus Petri Hyspani textus emendatus. Cum jucundo pictasmatis exercitio: eruditi viri F. Thomæ Murner, ordinis minorum, theologie doctoris eximii." 4to, Strasburg, 1509 Leber says that the book was first printed at Cracow in 1507; and that an edition of it, in octavo, was printed at Paris in 1629. Murner was one of Luther's early opponents; and one of the pamphlets which was published during their controversy bears the following title: "Antwort dem Murner, uff scine frag, ob der Künig von Engellant ein lügner sey, oder der götliche doctor Mart. Luther, 1523." "An answer to Mumer on his question, 'Whether the King of England, or the reverend Doctor Martin Luther, is a liar?'"

[121] "Chartiludium Institute summarie, doctore Thoma Murner memorante et ludente." 4to, Strasburg, 1518. A copy of this book was sold at Dr. Kloss's sale in 1835; and in the Catalogue, No. 2579, we are informed that "this very rare and curious volume contains very many wood-engravings, illustrative of four distinct games played by the ancients with paper." Such games, we may presume, as are played at with the Statutes at large. If Murner understood any game, he must have learnt it subsequent to the publication of his Logical Card-play; and if he were able to make it subservient to the explanation of anything else, he must have improved himself greatly between 1508 and 1518.

[122] The Voyage of Columbus, in Poems by Samuel Rogers. Mr. Rogers's note on the passage above quoted is: "Among those who went with Columbus were many adventurers and gentlemen of the court. Primero was then the game in fashion. See Vega, p. 2, lib. iii, c. 9."

[123] "Y porque decimos, que estos Españoles jugavan, y no hemos dicho con què; es de saber, que despues que en la sangrienta battalla de Manvila los quemaron los naypes, que llevavan con todo lo demàs que alli perdieron, hacian naypes de pergamino, y los pintavan à las mil maravillas; porque en qualquiera necessidad que se los ofrescia, se animavan à hacer lo que avian menester. Y salian con ello, como si toda su vida huvieran sido Maestros de aquel oficio; y porque no podian, ò no querian hacer tantos, quantos eran menester, hicieron los que bastavan, sirviendo por horas limitadas, andando por rueda entre los jugadores; de donde (ò de otro paso semejante) podriamos decir, que huviese nascido el refràn, que entre los Tahures se usa decir jugando: Demonos priesa señores, que vienen por los naypes; y como los que hacian los nuestros eran de cuero, duravan por peñas."—La Florida del Inca [Garcilasso de la Vega], Parte Primera del Libro Quinto, capitulo i, p. 198. Folio, Madrid, 1723.

[124] "Also I order and command that there be a care that all soldiers have their room clean, and unpestered of chests, and other things, without consenting in any case to have cards; and, if there be any, to be taken away presently: neither permit them to the mariners; and if the soldiers have any, let me be advertised."—Orders set down by the Duke of Medina to be observed in the Voyage towards England, 1588; reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.

[125] Strutt, who quotes this passage in his Sports and Pastimes, refers to Sir William Forrest, and Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii, sect. iii, p. 311. Sir William Forrest's work, entitled 'The Poesye of Princelye Practise,' was written towards the conclusion of the reign of Henry VIII, and presented to Edward VI. The author allows that a king, after dinner, may for a while "repose" himself at tables, chess, or cards; but denies the latter to labouring people. Strutt says that the work is in manuscript, in the Royal Library.

[126] Sir Robert Baker, in his Chronicle, states that in the eighteenth year of Henry VIII a proclamation was made against all unlawful games, so that in all places, tables, dice, cards, and bowls were taken and burnt; but that this order continued not long, for young men, being thus restrained, "fell to drinking, stealing conies, and other worse misdemeanours."

[127] Furny—French, fourni—prepared, sorted, furnished, in complete fashion, in full equipage. The card was a coat card, in a certain sense, though certainly not an honour.

[128] For some account of the author of this satire, the reader is referred to Annals of the English Bible, by Christopher Anderson, vol. i, pp. 63, 116, 136, 137. 8vo, 1845.

[129]

Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII, afterwards Queen Mary. With a Memoir of the Princess, and Notes, by Fred. Madden, Esq., F.S.A. 1831. From the following references in the index, the reader may judge of Mary's partiality to the game.

"Cards, money delivered to the Princess to play at, p. 3, 10, 11, 14, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 49, 50, 55, 57, 59, 67, 69, 73, 76, 81, sæpe, 101."

"Cards, money lent, to play at, 4, 13, 29, 30."

The sums delivered are mostly from 20s. to 40s. One entry is for so small a sum as 2s. 2d., and another for 12s. 6d.

[130] The charge of gaming is frequently alleged against the more wealthy members of the Roman Catholic clergy by writers who were in favour of the Reformation. "Item les grosses sommes de deniers qu'ils jouent ordinairement, soit à la Prime, à la Chance, à la Paulme, n'ont pas esté mises en compte. Qui est le bon Papiste qui pourroit se contenter de voir son Prelat jouër et perdre pour une après disnee, quatre, cinq, et six mil escus: pour une reste de Prime, avoir couché cinq cens escus; pour un Aflac en perdre mille; que la pluspart des episcopaux, jusques aux moindres chanoines, tiennent berland ouvert à jouër à tous jeux prohibez et defendus, non seulement par le droit canon, mais par les ordonnances du roi? L'exces y est bien tel, qu'on monstrera qu'au simple chanoine, en achapt de cartes et de dez, a employé durant une année cent, et six vingts escus, compris la chandelle et le vin de ceux qui la mouchoyent."—Le Cabinet du Roy de France, dans lequel il y a trois Perles precieuses d'inestimable valeur, p. 65. 12mo, 1581. This virulent attack on the French clergy is ascribed by Mons. Le Duchat to Nicolas Froumenteau; and by L'Isle de Sales to Nicolas Barnaud.

[131] Anderson's Annals of the English Bible, vol. ii, p. 500.

[132] The Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland were the principal leaders of the Rebellion, or "Rising in the North," in 1569.

[133] His host was George Pyle, of Millheugh, on Ousenam water, about four miles south-eastward from Jedburgh. The Earl of Westmoreland was then staying with Kerr of Fairniherst.

[134] Hector, or Eckie of Harlaw, as he is called in the Border Minstrelsy, delivered up the Earl of Northumberland, who had sought refuge with him, to the Regent Murray.

[135] The name of the person against whom the bill was filed was Henry Robson, probably of Falstone. His non-appearance seems to have caused the dispute between the wardens, Sir J. Foster and Sir J. Carmichael, which ended in a general combat between their followers.

[136]

The above passage is quoted by Mr. T. Crofton Croker in a note on the following lines in "A Kerry Pastoral," a poem published in Concanen's Miscellanies, 1724, and reprinted by the Percy Society:

"Dingle and Derry sooner shall unite,

Shannon and Cashan both be drain'd outright;

And Kerry men forsake their cards and dice,

Dogs be pursued by Hares, and Cats by Mice,

Water begin to burn, and fire to wet,

Before I shall my college friends forget."

The favorite game of the Kerry men is said to have been "One-and-thirty."

[137]

Pascasius Justus, in his work entitled Alea, first published in 1560, relates that though he frequently felt difficulty in obtaining a supply of provisions when travelling in Spain, he never came to a village, however poor, in which cards were not to be found. The prevalence of card-playing in Spain about the middle of the sixteenth century is further shown in a work entitled 'Satyra invectiva contra los Tahures: en que se declaran los daños que al euerpo, y al alma y la hazienda se siguen del juego de los naypes. Impressa en Sevilla, en casa de Martin de Montesdoca, Año de M.D.LVII.' This work is erroneously ascribed by Antonio, in his Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, to Dominic Valtanas, or Baltanas, a Dominican friar, at whose instance the edition referred to was printed. The author was Diego del Castillo, who also wrote another work on the same subject, entitled 'Reprobacion de los Juegos,' printed at Valladolid in 1528.—The author derives the word Tahur, a gamester, from Hurto, theft, robbery, by transposing the syllables, and changing o into a:

"Tahur y ladron,

Una cosa son."

[138] "Il existe en Belgique plusieurs tableaux attribués à Jean Van Eyck, qu'il est inutile de désigner, et qui par les costumes des personnages dénotent une postériorité d'un grand nombre d'années. Nantes en possède un, également attribué à ce maître, dont les costumes sont ceux du règne de Charles VIII. Le sujet, sous le titre de Philippe-le-Bon consultant une tireuse de cartes, en a été donné dans le Magasin Pittoresque, année 1842, p. 324."—Quelques Mots sur la Gravure au Millésime de 1418, p. 13. Philippe-le-Bon, Duke of Burgundy, died in 1467; John Van Eyck in 1445.

[139] Though the ten is one of the cards employed in Marcolini's System of Fortune-telling, it appears to have been generally omitted in the packs of cards used by the Italian jugglers of the sixteenth century. Leber, who says that he had examined "un grand nombre de tours de cartes" described in the pamphlets of the most famous Italian jugglers of the sixteenth century, yet refers only to two works on the subject printed before 1600; one of them entitled 'Opera nuova non più vista, nella quale potrai facilmente imparare molti giochi di mano. Composta da Francesco di Milano, nominato in tutto il mondo il Bagatello.' 8vo, circa 1550. The other, 'Giochi di carte bellissimi e di memoria, per Horatio Galasso.' Venetia, 1593. The author of the following work, also referred to by Leber, appears to have been the original "Pimperlimpimp," whose fame as a mountebank physician appears to have been still fresh in the memory of the wits of the reign of Queen Anne: 'Li rari et mirabili Giuochi di Carte, da Alberto Francese, detto Perlimpimpim.' 8vo, Bologna, 1622.

[140] Life of Lord Bacon, p. 5. Lord Bacon relates the circumstances, and a certain curious man's explanation of them, in his Sylva, Century xth, p. 245. Edit. 1631.

[141] Cuffe assisted Colombani in the "editio princeps" of the Greek text of the romance of Daphnis and Chloe, printed at Florence, 4to, 1598.

[142] "Observations on a picture by Zuccaro, from Lord Falkland's collection, supposed to represent the game of Primero. By the Hon. Daines Barrington." In the Archæologia, vol. viii. Mr. Barrington says, "According to tradition in the family, it was painted by Zuccaro, and represented Lord Burleigh playing at cards with three other persons, who from their dress appear to be of distinction, each of them having two rings on the same fingers of both their hands. The cards are marked as at present, and differ from those of more modern times only by being narrower and longer."

[143] Original Letters Illustrative of English History, with Notes by Sir Henry Ellis. Second Series, vol. iii, p. 102.

[144] When the prohibition to play at cards or dice was first introduced into apprentices' indentures I have not been able to learn. It occurs, however, in the form of an indenture for an apprentice in 'A Book of Presidents,' printed about 1565, and said to have been compiled by Thos. Phaer, the translator of the seven first books of the Æneid. In the title-page of his translation, 1558, Phaer describes himself as "Solicitour to the King and Queenes Majesties."

[145] Those injunctions with respect to tavern-haunting and gaming are embodied in the seventy-fifth canon of the Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, 1603.

[146]

Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Edited by Peter Cunningham, p. 176. Published by the Shakspere Society.

A comedy intended to display the evil consequences of dicing and card-playing was performed before the Emperor Maximilian II at Vienna, on New Year's Day, 1570.—See the Collectanea of Johannes a Munster, appended to the Alea of Pascasius Justus, edit. 1617.

[147] A Briefe Apologie of Poetrie, 1591. Quoted by Mr. P. Cunningham, in his notes to Extracts from Accounts of the Revels, p. 223. In dramatic representations of the game of cards we seem to have preceded the French. In 1676, a comedy by Thomas Corneille, called 'Le Triomphe des Dames,' was acted at Paris, in the theatre of the Hôtel de Guegenaud, and the ballet of the Game of Piquet was one of the interludes. "The four Knaves first made their appearance with their halberts, in order to clear the way. The Kings came in succession, giving their hands to the Queens, whose trains were borne up by four Slaves, the first of whom represented Tennis, the second Billiards, the third Dice, and the fourth Backgammon."—Historical Essays upon Paris. Translated from the French of Mons. de Saintfoix, vol. i, p. 229. Edit. 1766.

[148] In an engraving of St. Peter denying Christ, after a painting by Teniers, two soldiers are seen playing at cards in the hall of the high priest; and, from the chalks on the table, the game appears to be Put.

[149] See Mr. Battle's Opinions on Whist, in Essays by Elia (Charles Lamb).

[150] "The Anatomie of Abuses, containing A Discoverie, or breife summarie of such notable vices and corruptions as now raigne in many Christian countreyes of the world; but especially in the countrey of Ailgna: [Anglia, England.] Together with the most fearefull examples of God's judgements executed upon the wicked for the same, as well in Ailgna of late, as in other places elsewhere. Made Dialogue-wise by Philip Stubs," p. 112. Edit. printed by Richard Jones, 1583.—The Jew's supposition that a thunder-storm was evidence of the divine displeasure at his being about to indulge in a rasher of bacon, is nothing compared with Master Stubbes's announcement of the wrath of heaven against those who indulge in starched collars, fine linen shirts, and velvet breeches.

[151] A Discourse of the most illustrious Prince, Henry, late Prince of Wales. Written in 1626 by Sir Charles Cornwallis. Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany.

[152] 'Tom Tell-troath: or a free Discourse touching the manners of the time.' Reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany. The king's "forraygn children" mentioned in this pamphlet are his daughter Elizabeth and her family. Elizabeth was married to Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, the competitor of the Emperor Ferdinand II for the crown of Bohemia.

[153] "The King of Spain, or Gondemar, his ambassador."

[154] This engraving is preserved in a collection of Proclamations, Ballads, &c., formed by the late Joseph Ames, and now in the library of the Royal Society of Antiquaries. For the part played by Bethlem Gabor in the affairs of Europe, between 1618 and 1628, the reader is referred to Schiller's History of the Thirty-Years' War.

[155] "Five-Cards is an Irish game, and is as much played in that kingdom, and that for considerable sums of money, as All-Fours is played in Kent, but there is little analogy between them. There are but two can play at it; and there are dealt five cards a piece.... The five-fingers (alias five of trumps) is the best card in the pack; the ace of hearts is next to that, and the next is the ace of trumps."—The Compleat Gamester, p. 90. Edit. 1709. First printed in 1674.

[156] Malone's Supplemental Observations on Shakspeare, cited by Barrington. Dr. Moore, in his Views of Society and Manners in Italy, mentions the card-playing at the opera at Florence. "I was never more surprised," says he, "than when it was proposed to me to make one of a whist party, in a box which seemed to have been made for the purpose, with a little table in the middle. I hinted that it would be full as convenient to have the party somewhere else; but I was told, good music added greatly to the pleasure of a whist party; that it increased the joy of good fortune, and soothed the affliction of bad."

[157] Numbers, xxvi, 55, 56; Proverbs, xvi, 33; Acts, i, 24-26.

[158] This appears to have been one of the chief grounds of objection against cards and dice-play in Scotland, about a century later. Adam Petrie, "the Scottish Chesterfield," adopts Balmford's conclusion: "Lott is an ordinance whereby God often made known his mind, and therefore ought not to be turned into a play; but Cards and Dice are Lott; therefore they ought not to be turned into a play."—Rules of Good Deportment, or of Good Breeding, printed at Edinburgh, 1710; reprinted 1835.

[159] John Wesley, who sometimes "sought an answer" by lots of this kind, was charged by the Rev. Augustus Toplady with "tossing up for his creed, as porters or chairmen toss up for a halfpenny."—Letter to the Rev. John Wesley, p. 7. Edit. 1770.

[160] Traité du Jeu, où l'on examine les principales questions de Droit naturel et de Morale qui ont du rapport à cette matière. Par Jean Barbeyrac, Professeur en Droit à Groningue. Seconde édition, revue et augmentée. En trois tomes, 12mo. Amsterdam, 1737.

[161] Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, Edward Darcy obtained a patent for the manufacture of cards; and in the reign of James I the importation of cards was prohibited, after 20th July, 1615, as the art of making them was then brought to perfection in this country. As a duty or tax of five shillings for every twelve dozen packs was levied about that time by the authority of the Lord Treasurer, the statement that such a tax was first levied in 1631, in the reign of Charles I, is erroneous. This tax was one of the impositions complained of by the Commons, in the reign of Charles I, "as arbitrary and illegal, being levied without consent of Parliament." I am informed that the first act of parliament imposing a tax on cards was passed in 1711, in the reign of Queen Anne. The company of card-makers was first incorporated by letters patent of Charles I in 1629.—See Singer's Researches, pp. 223, 224, 226, 365.

[162] Observations on the Antiquity of Card-playing, Archæologia, vol. viii.

[163] Etudes Historiques sur les Cartes à jouer, p. 30. Mons. Leber had in his collection some cards of Jean Volay's manufacture, which were discovered in the boards of a book. Those cards are described in the Catalogue of his books, tom. i, p. 241, Article xvii. There are also cards manufactured by Jean Volay preserved in the Bibliothèque du Roi, at Paris.

[164] The Netherlands seem to have been famed at an early period for the manufacture of cards. Albert Durer, in the journal which he kept during his visit to those parts in 1521, notes that he bought half a dozen packs for seven stivers: "Item hab umb ein halb dutzet Niederländischer Karten geben 7 Stüber."—Albrecht Dürers Reisejournal, in Von Murr's Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 7ter Theil, s. 96. From a passage in Ascham's Toxophilos, 1545, quoted by Singer, it would appear that the price of cards was then about twopence a pack: "He sayd a payre of cards cost not past ii.d."

[165] The Four Knaves: a series of Satirical Tracts by Samuel Rowlands. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by E. F. Rimbault, Esq. Reprinted for the Percy Society, 1843. For the loan of the cuts of the Four Knaves the publisher is indebted to the Percy Society.

[166] On the word mandilions, Mr. Rimbault has the following note: "Mandiglione, a jacket, a Mandilion?—Florio's New World of Words, ed. 1611. Stubbes (apud Strutt, dress and habits, vol. ii, p. 267) says that it covered the whole body down to the thighs; and Randle Holme describes it as 'a loose hanging garment, much like to our jacket or jumps, but without sleeves, only having holes to put the arms through; yet some were made with sleeves, but for no other use than to hang on the back.'"

[167]

In 1641, a pamphlet, in verse, against monopolizers and patentees, appeared with the following title: 'A Pack of Patentees, opened, shuffled, cut, dealt, and played.' The articles monopolized, or for which patents had been obtained, were coals, soap, starch, leather, salt, hops, gold wire, and horns.

"We'll shuffle up the pack; those that before

Did play at post and pair, must play no more."

[168]

About the same period the game of cards seems to have furnished titles to political pamphlets in other countries as well as in England. The following is the title of a Dutch pamphlet, without date, but apparently published about the time that the treaty of Westphalia was concluded, 1648: 'Het herstelde Verkeer-bert verbetert in een Lanterluy-spel.' From a passage in this pamphlet it appears that the game of Lanterloo was the same as that called Labate—the French La Bête, called "Beast," in Cotton's Compleat Gamester.

"Vlaming. Was spel is dat, Vader Jems? ick weet niet dat ick dat oyt ghelesen heb, maer al die ghy genoemt hebt weet ick van.

"Vader Jems. O Bredder! het is dat spel dat veeltijts genoemt werdt Labate, ofte om beter te seggen, Lanterluy."