Lockdown and subsequent restrictions have given me time to browse
the dustier reaches of my chess library, including Napier's Paul
Morphy and the Golden Age of Chess, a compilation of his
three booklets Amenities and Background of Chess, each a
selection of 100 lightly annotated games to amuse and provide an
educative ABC. Horowitz edited this combined work and commented:

"Among the bright and pleasurable writings on chess, perhaps the
brightest of all were the three booklets which W. E. Napier
produced on his Amenities and Background of Chess-play.
The overall impression of these booklets is one of intense
artistry: the games are artistic gems; his reflections on them
have verve and profundity; his anecdotes are fascinating; yet none
of these surpass the felicity of his language."

Something not apparent from the Dover edition is Napier's
extraordinary feat of providing thrughout the original booklets a
justified column of text using a mono-spaced typeface.  If
the import of that isn't clear, have a look here:

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/napier.html

To do so at all is quite an achievement; in such graceful prose
is very remarkable.

Winter (linked above) gives several toothsome quotations; I
rather liked his remark in the Introduction (given in full at ChessGames)
about the unappreciated chessplayer:

"twice afflicted--like those Puritan women who endured the same
hardships as the men, and, intrepidly, had also to endure the
men."

As well as his own wit, Napier sprinkles bon mots by
other players, among whom Teichmann clearly had a splendid twinkle
in his remaining eye.

Napier was of master strength, and I guess Grandmaster strength,
coming ahead of many of the great masters of his day, although for
many years I knew him only as the man who lost a brilliant game to
Lasker (who remarked, "It was your brilliancy, but I won it").