ons; their testimony will not be of much weight to
its disadvantage, since they are liable to the common objection of
condemning what they did not understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the art, when I see
the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the philomaths, and
the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with the utmost scorn and
contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe gentlemen in the country,
rich enough to serve the nation in parliament, poring in Partridge's
almanack, to find out the events of the year at home and abroad; not
daring to propose a hunting-match, till Gadbury or he have fixed the
weather.

I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of the
fraternity, to be not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if I do not
produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks, to convince any
reasonable man, that they do not so much as understand common grammar
and syntax; that they are not able to spell any word out of the usual
road, nor even in their prefaces write common sense or intelligible
English. Then for their observations and predictions, they are such as
will equally suit any age or country in the world. "This month a certain
great person will be threatened with death or sickness." This the
news-papers will tell them; for there we find at the end of the year,
that no month passes without the death of some person of note; and it
would be hard if it should be otherwise, when there are at least two
thousand persons of not in this kingdom, many of them old, and the
almanack-maker has the liberty of chusing the sickliest season of the
year where he may fix his prediction. Again, "This month an eminent
clergyman will be preferr'd;" of which there may be some hundreds half
of them with one foot in the grave. Then "such a planet in such a house
shews great machinations, plots and conspiracies, that may in time
be brought to light:" After which, if we hear of any discovery, the
astrologer gets the honour; if not, his prediction still stands good.
And at last, "God preserve King William from all his open and secret
enemies, Amen." When if the King should happen to have died, the
astrologer plainly foretold it; otherwise it passes but for the pious
ejaculation of a loyal subject: Though it unluckily happen'd in some of
their almanacks, that poor King William was pray'd for many months after
he was dead, because it fell out that he died about the beginnin