Lolli used Ercole del Rio's small book Sopra il Giuoco degli Scacchi (1750) as the basis for this great encyclopaedic work on chess. "Divided into three parts, the first is the annotated text of Del Rio, preceded by a letter from that writer with many valuable hints for the player; the second is a similar treatise dealing with the defence, written expressly for the book by del Rio, and elaborately annotated by Lolli -- a very necessary thing, for del Rio's text was even more difficult than that of the earlier work; and the third is a treatise on the Ending by Lolli himself, concluding with a carefully selected collection of 100 problems which was intended to challenge comparison with Stamma's 100 positions. It is in the second part of Lolli's book (pp. 365-68) that del Rio deals with Philidor's Analyze" (Murray pp. 868-69).

Illustrated.