:

tion: what was the second, action: what was the third, action and so on ad infinitum. This may be true in oratory; but contemplation in other things exceeds action. And therefore a wife man is never lefs alone, than when he is alone;

Nunquam minus folus, quam cum folus.

And Archimedes, the famous mathematician, was fo intent upon his problems, that he never minded the foldier who came to kill him. Therefore not to detract from the just praise which belongs to orators, they ought to confider that nature, which gave us two eyes to fee, and two ears to hear, has given us but one tongue to fpeak, wherein however fome do fo abound, that the virtuofi, who have been fo long in search for the perpetual motion, may infallibly find it there.

Some men admire republicks, because orators flourish there most, and are the great enemies of tyranny: but my opinion is, that one tyrant is better than a hundred. Befides, thefe orators inflame the people, whofe anger is really but a short fit of madness.

Ira furor brevis eft.

HOR.

After which, laws are like cobwebs, which may catch fmall flies, but let wafps and hornets break through. But in oratory the greatest art is to hide art,

Artis eft celare Artem.

But

But this may be the work of time, we must lay hold on all opportunities, and let flip no occafion, else we shall be forced to weave Penelope's web, unravel in the night what we spun in the day. And therefore I have observed, that time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, fignifying thereby, that we must take time (as we fay) by the forelock, for when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

The mind of man is at firft(if you will pardon the expreffion) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is foft, is capable of any impreffion, till time has hardened it. And at length death, that grim tyrant, stops us in the midft of our career. The greatest conquerors have at last been conquered by death, which spares none, from the fceptre to the spade.

Mors omnibus communis.

All rivers go to the fea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his army, to confider that in less than an hundred years they would be all dead. Anacreon was choaked with a grape-stone; and violent joy kills as well as violent grief. There is nothing in this world conftant, but inconftancy: yet Plato thought, that if virtue would appear to the world in her own native drefs, all men would be enamoured with her. But now, since intereft governs the world, and men neglect the golden mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the earth, would be despised, unless it were, as he did to Danae, in a golden fhower: for men now-a-days worship the rifing fun, and not the fetting.

Donec

Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos.

Thus have I, in obedience to your commands, ventured to expose myself to cenfure in this critical age, Whether I have done right to my fubject, must be left to the judgment of the learned: however, I cannot but hope, that my attempting of it may be an encouragement for some able pen to perform it with more fuccefs.

PRE

FOR

The YEAR 1708.

Wherein the month, and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as they will come to pass.

Written to prevent the people of England from being farther impofed on by vulgar almanack-makers.

By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Efq;

HAVE long confidered the gross abuse of aftrology in this kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not poffibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon thofe grofs impoftors, who set up to be the artists. I know feveral learned men have contended, that the whole is a cheat; that it is abfurd and ridiculous to imagine, the ftars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever hath not bent his ftudies that way, may be excufed for thinking fo, when he fees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the flars; who import a yearly ftock of nonfenfe, lyes, folly and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they defcend from no greater a height than their own brains.

I intend

I intend in a fhort time to publish a large and rational defence of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present, than that it hath in all ages been defended by many learned men, and among the reft by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the wifeft of uninspired mortals: to which if we add, that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, having been fuch as either did not apply their ftudies this way, or at least did not fucceed in their applications; their teftimony will not be of much weight to its difadvantage, fince they are liable to the common objection of condemning what they did not understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or do I think it an injury to the art, when I fee the common dealers in it, the ftudents in aftrology, the philomaths, and the reft of that tribe, treated by wife men with the utmost scorn and contempt; but I rather wonder when I obferve gentlemen in the country, rich enough to ferve the nation in parliament, poring in Patridge'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 aftrologers, but conjurers too, if I do not prodnce a hundred instances in all their almanacks to convince any reasonable man, that they do not fo much as understand common grammar and fyntax: that they are not able to spell any word out of the ufual road, nor even in their prefaces to write common sense or intelligible english. Then for their obfervations and predictions, they are such as will equally fuit any age or country in the world. This

month