itable to the occasion, I desired him to tell me freely and
ingenuously, whether the predictions Mr. Bickerstaff had published
relating to his death had not too much affected and worked on his
imagination. He confessed he had often had it in his head, but never
with much apprehension, till about a fortnight before; since which time
it had the perpetual possession of his mind and thoughts, and he did
verily believe was the true natural cause of his present distemper:
"For," said he, "I am thoroughly persuaded, and I think I have very good
reasons, that Mr. Bickerstaff spoke altogether by guess, and knew no more
what will happen this year than I did myself." I told him his discourse
surprised me, and I would be glad he were in a state of health to be able
to tell me what reason he had to be convinced of Mr. Bickerstaff's
ignorance. He replied, "I am a poor, ignorant follow, bred to a mean
trade, yet I have sense enough to know that all pretences of foretelling
by astrology are deceits, for this manifest reason, because the wise and
the learned, who can only know whether there be any truth in this
science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none
but the poor ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the
word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or
read." I then asked him why he had not calculated his own nativity, to
see whether it agreed with Bickerstaff's prediction, at which he shook
his head and said, "Oh, sir, this is no time for jesting, but for
repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my heart."
"By what I can gather from you," said I, "the observations and
predictions you printed with your almanacks were mere impositions on the
people." He replied, "If it were otherwise I should have the less to
answer for. We have a common form for all those things; as to
foretelling the weather, we never meddle with that, but leave it to the
printer, who takes it out of any old almanack as he thinks fit; the rest
was my own invention, to make my almanack sell, having a wife to
maintain, and no other way to get my bread; for mending old shoes is a
poor livelihood; and," added he, sighing, "I wish I may not have done
more mischief by my physic than my astrology; though I had some good
receipts from my grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I
thought could at least do no hurt."

I had some other discourse with him, which now I cannot