whereas it is the privilege of other Authors, to live after their deaths; Almanack makers are only excluded, because their Dissertations, treating only upon the Minutes as they pass, become useless as those go off:  in consideration of which, Time, whose Registers they are, gives them a lease in reversion, to continue their Works after their death.  Or, perhaps, a Name can make an Almanack as well as sell one.  And to strengthen this conjecture, I have heard the booksellers affirm, that they have desired Mr. PARTRIDGE to spare himself further trouble, and only to lend his Name; which could make Almanacks much better than himself.

I should not have given the Public or myself, the trouble of this Vindication, if my name had not been made use of by several persons, to whom I never lent it:  one of which, a few days ago, was pleased to father on me, a new set of Predictions.  But I think these are things too serious to be trifled with.  It grieved me to the heart, when I saw my Labours, which had cost me so much thought and watching, bawled about by the common hawkers of Grub street, which I only intended for the weighty consideration of the gravest persons.  This prejudiced the World so much at first, that several of my friends had the assurance to ask me, “Whether I were in jest?” To which I only answered coldly, that “the event will shew!” But it is the talent of our Age and nation to turn things of the greatest importance into ridicule.  When the end of the year had verified all my Predictions; out cometh Mr. PARTRIDGE’s Almanack! disputing the point of his death.  So that I am employed, like the General who was forced to kill his enemies twice over, whom a necromancer had raised to life.  If Mr. PARTRIDGE has practised the same experiment upon himself, and be again alive; long may he continue so!  But that doth not, in the least, contradict my veracity!  For I think I have clearly proved, by invincible demonstration, that he died, at farthest, within half an hour of the time I foretold [; and not four hours sooner, as the above-mentioned Author, in his Letter to a Lord hath maliciously suggested, with a design to blast my credit, by charging me with so gross a mistake].

FINIS.

Under the combined assault of the Wits, PARTRIDGE ceased to publish his Almanack for a while; but afterwards took heart again, publishing his “Merlinus Redivivus, being an Almanack for the year 1714, by JOHN PARTRIDGE, a Lover of Truth [P.P. 2465/6];” at p. 2 of which is the following epistle.

To ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.

SIR,

There seems to be a kind of fantastical propriety in a dead man’s addressing himself to a person not in Being.  ISAAC BICKERSTAFF [i.e., RICHARD STEELE] is no more [the Tatler having come to an end], and I have now nothing to dispute with on the subject of his fictions concerning me, sed magni nominis umbra, “a shadow only, and a mighty name.”