says,

After describing Ruff-and-honours the author 'Whist is a game not much differing from this. The ruffing privilege was abolished; each player still had twelve cards, but, instead of leaving an unknown stock on the table, the four deuces were discarded from the pack before dealing; a great step in advance, as it enabled the players to calculate with more certainty the contents of each other's hands. The score was still nine, tricks and honours counting as before.

Cotton never uses or alludes to the earlier name 'Whisk,' but he gives an independent derivation of the newer word. He says the game

'is called whist from the silence that is to be observed in the play.'

This meaning is warranted by the custom of the time. The word, although treated as a verb, adjective, or participle, by Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and others, is defined by Skinner (1671), one of the best authorities, as interjectio silentium imperans, and so it was commonly used. In an old play, written by Dekkar, in 1604, we find the example

'Whist! whist! my master.'

Cotton's derivation of the present name has been adopted by Johnson and Nares, and has always been most commonly received; but it must not be forgotten that the word 'whisk' is the older of the two, and that it continued in use, along with the other name, for a century after Cotton wrote. Pope, in his epistle to Mrs. Teresa Blount, 1715,

says

'Some squire, perhaps, you take delight to rack, Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack.'

Johnson describes whist as 'vulgarly pronounced whisk;' and the Hon. Daines Barrington, writing in 1786, on games at cards, adopts the latter orthography without any qualification.

It is possible to reconcile the two derivations by supposing that, when the game took its complete form, the more intellectual character it assumed demanded greater care and closer attention in the play; this was incompatible with noise in the room or with

the word whist!' may have been used in its interjectional form to insist on the necessary silence; and from the similarity of this to the term already in use the modification in the last letter may have taken its rise. It is worthy of remark, that in a fashionable book on Ombre, published in Berlin in 1714, the writer, who had probably never heard of the English game, says Pour bien jouer l'ombre, il faut du silence et de la tranquillité.'

But, whatever may be the views held in this country as to the origin of the name of our national card-game, it is only fair to our ingenious neighbours across the Channel to give their explanation, which we find in a French work on whist :

At a time when French was the current language in England, the people had become so infatuated with one of their games at cards, that it was prohibited after a certain hour. But parties met clandestinely to practise it; and when the question "Voulez-vous jouer ?" was answered by "Oui!" the master of the room added the interjection "St!" to impose silence. This occurred so often that "Ou-ist became at length the current appellation of the game !'

With these names there came to be associated another of a very strange character, namely swabbers' or 'swobbers.' Fielding, for example, in the account of Jonathan Wild's visit to the spunging-house in London, in 1682, says, 'whisk and swabbers was the game then in the chief vogue.' Swift, in his Essay on the Fates of Clergymen, ridicules Archbishop Tenison, who was said to be a dull man, for misunderstanding the term. He relates a known story of a clergyman, who was recommended to the Archbishop for preferment, when his Grace said, 'He had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and swobbers; that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned; but he could not digest those wicked swobbers.' 'It was with some pains,' adds the Dean, 'that my Lord Somers could undeceive him.' Johnson quotes the pretended speech of the Archbishop, and defines swabbers as 'four privileged cards, which are only incidentally used for betting at whist.' These were probably identical with the four honours; and it has been conjectured that as whisk' was intended to ridicule 'ruff,' the analogous term 'swabbers' (from swab, a kind of mop) may have been added to supply the place of the other part of the original name; so that

It is curious that although the precursors of whist had enjoyed favour in high places, yet whist itself, in its infancy, was chiefly played in low society, where cheats and sharpers assembled. The greatest part of Cotton's chapter is devoted to a warning against the tricks and frauds of these gentry. He alludes to the arts used in dealing,' and shows how, by ingenious devices, 'cunning fellows about this city may not only know all the cards by their backs, but may turn up honours for themselves, and avoid doing so for their adversaries.' The following passage gives some significant hints:

'He that can by craft overlook his adversaries' game hath a great advantage, for by that means he may partly know what to play securely. There is a way to discover to their partners what honours they have; as by the wink of one eye, or putting one finger on the nose or table, it signifies one honour; shutting both the eyes, two; placing three fingers or four on the table, three or four honours.'

In a republication of Cotton's work in 1734, these cautions are amplified, showing that whist still retained the same low char

acter.

The editor says, 'as whisk (he uses the old appellation) is a tavern game, the sharpers generally take care to put about the bottle before the game begins.' A special chapter is given to 'piping at whisk; and as this is an accomplishment not generally known at the modern clubs, the following extract may be interesting:

'Whist awhile

6

Walks his dull round beneath a cloud of smoke

Wreath'd fragrant from the pipe.'

idlenesses introduced to cheat the thirsty This being, he adds, one of the 'puling moments until the party

'Close in firm circle, and set, ardent, in,
For serious drinking.'

In the early part of the eighteenth century there was a mania for card-playing in all parts of Europe and in all classes of society, but in the best circles whist was still unknown. Gentlemen in their gaming coteries chiefly practised piquet (a very old game, invented in France in the fifteenth century), and in ladies' society the most fashionable amusement was Ombre, immortalized by Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' his disparaging mention of whist a year or (1712), in a manner strongly contrasted with two later.

It was about 1730 when the new game rose out of its obscurity and took rapidly the rank due to its great merits. At that time the ordinaries, where gambling had been long carried on to an enormous extent, and with the most scandalous abuses, began to be superseded by the more intellectual meetings at taverns and coffee-houses, which figure so prominently in the literary annals of the last century. It happened that a party of gentlemen who frequented the Crown coffee-bouse in Bedford Row, and of whom the first Lord Folkstone was one, had become acquainted with the game, and practised it at their meetings. They soon found out it had merits, studied it carefully, and arrived, for the first time, at some fundamental rules of play.

The way having been thus prepared, there was wanting a man of genius who should further work out the elements of the game and mould it into a permanent, logical, scientific form. This man appeared in the person of EDMOND HOYLE. There is very little trustworthy information as to his antecedents. He was born in 1672: it is said he studied as a barrister, and he styles himself in his first book a gentleman.' It is clear he was a man of good education, and moved

It appears that he had studied whist for many years and he saw, not only that it had great capabilities, but that it was much debased by the use made of it by sharpers for cheating inexperienced players out of their money. He believed that it was in his power to guard the public against these unprincipled practices, as well as to excite a more legitimate interest in the game, by spreading a better knowledge of the principles on which it should be played; and to attain these objects he resolved to teach it professionally. His spirited attempt excited. much attention, as we find several notices of it on record. In the 'Rambler' of May 8, 1750, a lady writes:

As for play, I do think I may, indeed, indulge in that, now I am my own mistress. Papa made me drudge at whist till I was tired of it; and, far from wanting a head, Mr. Hoyle, when he had not given me above forty lessons, said I was one of his best scholars.'

In the Gentleman's Magazine' of February, 1755, a writer professing to give the autobiography of a fashionable physician,

'Hoyle tutored me in several games at cards, and under the name of guarding me from being cheated insensibly gave me a taste for sharping.'

In the course of this instruction he sold to his pupils a set of notes which he had drawn up, containing rules and directions for their guidance. These were in manuscript, and he charged a guinea for each copy. The novelty and great value of the rules were soon discovered, and surreptitious copies began to get into circulation, when Mr. Hoyle, to secure his copyright, had them published, and thus originated the work which stands first on the list at the head of this article.

At this time the final changes had been made by increasing the score to ter, and by using the whole pack, thus giving thirteen cards to each player. This latter improvement introduced the odd trick, an element of such great interest in the present game. Whether it was Hoyle, or some one previously, who made these changes, is not clear; but at any rate the game, as he presents it, is precisely the form of long whist ever since played..

His book had a great and rapid success; it went through several editions in one year, and it seems to have been again pirated, as the author found it necessary to certify every genuine copy by attaching his autograph signature, of which the following,

simile.

Homond Hoyle

In the fifteenth edition the signature was, for the first time, impressed from a woodblock, and in the seventeenth it was announced that Mr. Hoyle was dead.' The great man departed this life, full of years and of honours, on the 29th of August, 1769.

Byron's oft-quoted parallel

Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to
Hoyle,'

hardly does justice to our author, for he was far more than the historian of whist; he may, essentially, be considered its founder.

The effect of Hoyle's promulgation of the game in its improved form was very prompt, as we learn from a witty and amusing brochure that appeared in the same year, 1743, called 'The Humours of Whist, a dramatic Satire, as acted every day at White's and other coffee-houses and assemblies.' It is a short comedy, the principal characters being Professor Whiston (Hoyle), who gives lessons in the game; Sir Calculation Puzzle, an enthusiastic player, who muddles his head with Hoyle's calculations and always loses; pupils, sharpers, and their dupes. The object is chiefly to ridicule the pretensions of Hoyle and the enthusiasm of his followers, and to show that skill and calculation are of no avail against bad luck or premeditated fraud. The work was reprinted ten years later, but it is scarce, and we may give a few extracts that throw light on the circumstances attending the first introduction of the new rules of the game.

เ

Hoyle had given out that he had spent forty years in its study, and the prologue

says:

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 center'd 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 schoolboys in their riper years.' Sir Calculation Puzzle gives some amusing explanations of his losses. In one case he says:

"That certainly was the most out-of-the-way bite ever was heard of. Upon the pinch of the game, when he must infallibly have lost it, the dog ate the losing card, by which means we dealt again, and faith he won the game.'

of recovering his loss. The new plan was found so lively that it soon became popular, and has long since superseded long whist in the best circles. The reason of the preference is not difficult to discover. All good players must have found out how the interest increased towards the close of the long game, when the parties were pretty even, and when it became necessary to pay stricter attention to the score, in order to regulate the play. Now to cause this state of things to recur more frequently, it would be sufficient to play, as it were, the latter half of the game without the former, i.e., to commence with both parties at the score of five; for this is the true sense of the alteration.

This mode of viewing it accounts for no change being made in the value of the honours. Some authorities think the scoring for these should have been halved, and, no doubt, this would have given more effect to skill in play; but such a change would have rendered the game less generally interesting. It must never be forgotten that the element of chance is one of the attractive features of whist, to good players as well as to mediocre ones, and to tamper with the present arrangement would probably endanger the popularity of the game.

Whist was known in France at an early period by translations of Hoyle. It was played by Louis XV., and under the Empire was a favourite game of Josephine and Marie Louise. After the Restoration it was taken up more enthusiastically. "The nobles,' says a French writer, had gone to England to learn to think, and they brought back the thinking game with them.' Talleyrand was the great player of the day, and his mot'You do not know whist, young man? What a sad old age you are preparing for yourself is a standing quotation in all whist books. Charles X. was playing whist at St. Cloud on the 29th July, 1830, when the tricolour was waving on the Tuileries, and he had lost his throne. His successor, Louis Philippe, when similarly engaged, had to submit to an elegant insolence. He had dropped a louis, and stopped the game to look for it, when a foreign ambassador, one of the party, set fire to a billet of 1000 francs to give light to the King under the table.

In 1839 appeared a Traité du Whiste,' by M. Deschapelles, whom Mr. Clay calls the finest whist player, beyond any comparison, the world has ever seen.' Much was to be expected from such a quarter, but the publication was but a fragment of a larger work that never appeared. The author treats of whist in a manner highly spirituel. He reasons on immensity and eternity, on metaphysical necessity and trial by jury; he in

vokes the sun of Joshua and the star of the Magi; he investigates the electric affinities of the players, and illustrates a hand by analy tical geometry. He died some fifteen or twenty years ago.

The latest stage in the history of whist comprises the more modern determination and consolidation of its scientific constitution, both theoretical and practical, as exhibited in the three works conjoined with that of Hoyle in the heading to the present article.

This important step was brought about by a circumstance somewhat similar to that which gave rise to the first development of the game by Hoyle, a century and a quarter before. Between 1850 and 1860, a knot of young men at Cambridge, of considerable ability, who had at first taken up whist for amusement, found it offer such a field for intellectual study, that they continued its practice more systematically, with a view to its complete scientific investigation. Since the general adoption of short whist, the constant practice of adepts had led to the introduc tion of many improvements in detail, but nothing had been done to reduce the modern play into a systematic form, or to lay it clearly before the public; its secrets, so far as they differed from the precepts of Hoyle and Matthews, were confined to small coteries of club players. The little whist school held together afterwards in London, and added to its numbers; and in 1862 one of its members brought out the work published under the name of 'Cavendish,' the principal object of which was to illustrate the modern play by a set of model games, after the manner of those so much used at chess. Two years afterwards appeared the Essay of Mr. Clay, and a little later that of Dr. Pole.

Each of these publications is distinct in its object. The work of Dr. Pole expounds the fundamental theory on which the modern game is based; that of Cavendish gives detailed rules for, and examples of, its application in practice; and that of Mr. Clay is an able dissertation on the more refined points of the best modern play, by the best modern player. Taken together, these books (which ought to be combined in one volume) furnish a complete epitome of the game, presenting it both theoretically and practically in the perfect state at which it has now arrived, by continued study and practice during the two centuries that have elapsed since it first assumed a a definite shape and took its present name.

We may now endeavour to give a general idea of what the game is in its most improved form.