to find favour under the government of James II., and Partridge accordingly made his way to Holland.  On his return he resumed his Almanac, the character of which is exactly described in the introduction to the Predictions, and it appears to have had a wide sale.  Partridge, however, was not the only impostor of his kind, but had, as we gather from notices in his Almanac and from his other pamphlets, many rivals.  He was accordingly obliged to resort to every method of bringing himself and his Almanac into prominence, which he did by extensive and impudent advertisements in the newspapers and elsewhere.  In his Almanac for 1707 he issues a notice warning the public against impostors usurping his name.  It was this which probably attracted Swift’s attention and suggested his mischievous hoax.

The pamphlets tell their own tale, and it is not necessary to tell it here.  The name, Isaac Bickerstaff, which has in sound the curious propriety so characteristic of Dickens’s names, was, like so many of the names in Dickens, suggested by a name on a sign-board, the name of a locksmith in Long Acre.  The second tract, purporting to be written by a revenue officer, and giving an account of Partridge’s death, was, of course, from the pen of Swift.  The verses on Partridge’s death appeared anonymously on a separate sheet as a broadside.  It is amusing to learn that the tract announcing Partridge’s death, and the approaching death of the Duke of Noailles, was taken quite seriously, for Partridge’s name was struck off the rolls of Stationers’ Hall, and the Inquisition in Portugal ordered the tract containing the treasonable prediction to be burned.  As Stationers’ Hall had assumed that Partridge was dead—­a serious matter for the prospects of his Almanac—­it became necessary for him to vindicate his title to being a living person.  Whether the next tract, Squire Bickerstaff Detected, was, as Scott asserts, the result of an appeal to Rowe or Yalden by Partridge, and they, under the pretence of assisting him, treacherously making a fool of him, or an independent j’eu d’esprit, is not quite clear.  Nor is it easy to settle with any certainty the authorship.  In the Dublin edition of Swift’s works, it is attributed to Nicholas Rowe; Scott assigns it to Thomas Yalden, the preacher of Bridewell and a well-known poet.  Congreve is also said to have had a hand in it.  It would have been well for Partridge had he allowed matters to rest here, but unhappily he inserted in the November issue of his Almanac another solemn assurance to the public that he was still alive; and was fool enough to add, that he was not only alive at the time he was writing, but was also alive on the day on which Bickerstaff had asserted that he was dead.  Swift saw his opportunity, and in the most amusing of this series of tracts proceeded to prove that Partridge, under whatever delusions as to his continued existence he might be labouring, was most certainly dead and buried.