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 Astronomy, the Philomaths, and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with the utmost scorn and contempt:  but I 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, unless GADBURY or he have fixed the weather.

I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any others 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 Grammar and Syntax; that they are not able to spell any word out of the usual road, nor even, in their Prefaces, to write common sense, or intelligible English.

Then as their Observations or Predictions, they are such as will suit any Age or country in the world.

This month, a certain great Person will be threatened with death or sickness.  This the News Paper will tell them.  For there we find at the end of the year, that no month passeth without the death of some Person of Note:  and it would be hard if it should be otherwise, where there are at least two thousand Persons of Note in this kingdom, many of them old; and the Almanack maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season of the year, where he may fix his prediction.

Again, This month, an eminent Clergyman will be preferred.  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 passeth but for the pious ejaculation of a loyal subject:  although it unluckily happened in some of their Almanacks, that poor King WILLIAM was prayed for, many months after he was dead; because it fell out, that he died about the beginning of the year.

To mention no more of their impertinent Predictions, What have we to do with their advertisements about pills, or their mutual quarrels in verse and prose of Whig and Tory? wherewith the stars have little to do.

Having long observed and lamented these, and a hundred other abuses of this Art too tedious to repeat; I resolved to proceed in a New Way; which, I doubt not, will be to the general satisfaction of the Kingdom.  I can, this year, produce but a specimen of what I design for the future:  having employed the most part of my time in adjusting and correcting the calculations I made for some years past; because I would offer nothing to the World, of which I am not as fully satisfied as that I am now alive.