ON ASTROLOGERS AND ALMANACS. (Continued from November Magazine, vol. X. p. 489.) THE respect paid to Astrologers, even by men of learning, at the period of which we treat, was equal to the contempt they lie under at the present time. It is true there were certain exceptions; Shakspeare, for instance, banters their absurd opinions in his King Henry IV. part first, in the character of Glendour : "At my nativity The front of Heaven was full of fiery shapes, [birth Of burning cressets; know, that at my The frame and foundation of the earth Shook like a coward. "Hotspur. So it would have done, At the same season, if your mother's car Had kitten'd, though yourself had ne'et been born." And, again, in King Lear, act 1st, Edmund says, "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the Sun, Moon, and Stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by inforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil by a divine thrusting on." Ward, in his Lives of the Gresham Professors, informs us, that the learned Mr. Gataker, desiring Mr. Henry Briggs, the first geometry professor of that college, to give him his opinion concerning judicial astrology; his answer was, "that he conceived it to be a mere system of groundless conceits." Some, however, beheld these men with admiration, and thought that an order of persons who were familiarly acquainted with the stars, and privy to the decrees of heaven, were in the highest degree respectable. Others, who looked upon their art as sorcery, regarded them with horror and detestation. In the reign of James the First, letters patent were granted to the two Universities and the Stationers' Company, for an exclusive right of printing Almanacs, and under their patronage astrology flourished till beyond the middle of the last century; but in 1775, a blow was struck which demolished this legal monopoly. One Thomas Carnan, a bookseller, had some years before detected or presumed the illegality of the exclusive right, and invaded it accordingly. The cause came before the Court of Common Pleas in the above-named year, and was there decided against the Company. In 1779, Lord North brought a Bill into the House of Commons to renew and legalize the privilege; but, after an able speech by Erskine in favour of the public, the House rejected the measure by a majority of 45; but the Stationers' Company afterwards managed to regain the exclusive market, by purchasing the works of their competitors. The absurdity and even indecency of some of these productions was fully exposed by Erskine; still the astrological and other predictions were continued it is, however, some extenuation, that the public, long accustomed to predictions of the deaths of princes and falls of rain, refused to purchase such Almanacs as did not contain their favourite absurdities. It is said that the Stationers' Company once tried the experiment of partially reconciling Francis Moore and common sense, by no greater step than omitting the column of the moon's influence on the parts of the human body, and that most of the copies were returned upon their hands. The Company appear to have acted from a simple desire to give people that which would sell, whether astrological or not; and not from any peculiar turn for prophecy inherent in the Corporation. Thus they issued at the same period the usual predictions in one Almanac, and undisguised contempt of them in another, apparently to suit all tastes. Almanacs were very early distinguished for the mixture of truth and falsehood which they contained, and at the present time, those which have the most extensive circulation are equally remarkable for a like mixture, interspersed with much that is useful. The most ancient are those of Partridge, Moore, and Poor Robin, which have survived their authors much more than a century, but continue to be published with their names. The two former of these publications have professed, in the plainest terms, to foretell the weather, even to a day, stating that on one day there will be rain, on another snow, and on a third thunder. They have also prophecied as to political events with nearly equal confidence, though not quite so distinctly. The latter, however, treats all such prognostications with becoming ridicule, but in some parts has shown but little regard to decency, and in others approached to utter obscenity. Mr. Granger observes, "There appeared in the reign of Charles II. an Almanac under the name of 'Poor Robin, a well-wisher to the Mathematics,' which has been continued for about a century. The author hit the taste of the common people, who were much delighted with a wit of their own level. This occasioned the publication of a book of jest under the same name, and in the same reign." Poor Robin died only a few years ago, at somewhat more than the hundred and seventieth year of his age. We happen to possess a few of the productions of his earlier days, in his twenty-sixth and two following years; some brief selections from these are subjoined, as specimens of the broad humour of those times. In the title-page he informs his readers that the work contains a twofold Kalendar; viz. "The Julian, English, or Old Account, and the Roundheads, Fanaticks, Paper-scull'd, or Maggotheaded New Account, with their several Saints'-days, and Observations upon every Month. Calculated for the Meridian of Mirth and Jollity, and fitted for the capacity of the meanest Noddles, that have but three grains of understanding." He dedicates to his "Potent Patron the World," as follows: "It is now grown customary to dedicate Almanacks, as well as other books; and indeed none more needs protection than they, considering the slanders that are cast upon them, and by none more than by them who understand them least. For this purpose, therefore, have I made choice of the World for Patron, knowing the whole world is better able to defend my Almanack than any one man whatsoever; but here was I at a loss what title or epithet I should bestow on it, seeing it alters its nature according to the persons that traffic in it: for with pipers, ballad-singers, and fidlers, it is a merry world; with prisoners, sick people, and GENT. MAG. VOL. XI. moneyless-persons, it is a sad world; with a soldier it is a hard world; with a divine, a wicked world; with a lawyer, a contentious world; with a courtier, a slippery world; with most men, a mad world; and with all men, a bad world: and yet, bad as it is, you see I trust the world with my book; but it is only for one year; and if it speed not well, the next I will change my patron; till then I am your annual Star-gazer, P. R." The Calendar contains the usual information, also observations and directions for the provision of good and suitable cheer for each season, &c. some few samples of which we have subjoined: Jan. "Best physick now to give relieve, Is legs of pork, and chines of beef." "There will be little of action amongst the soldiers, unless it be some few centinels blowing of their nails." Feb. "Strawberries and honesty will be scarcer this month than frost and cold weather; yet green pease will be as plentiful as snow in dog-days." Mar. "Graft warden pears and apple trees, For sparing flesh and bread and cheese." Apr. "Now if we have no rain this month, it will increase the price of butter; and if we have nothing but rain, it will hinder the maids from playing at stool-ball on Easter holy-days." May. "Those who their healths love, this month will engage To rise betimes, and butter eat with sage; Drink scurvy-grass-ale, and clarified [day." whey, And walk in the fields in the cool of the June. "Now toasting-irons and warming-pans Are not so used as pots and cans." July. "When cherries in the month of As ripe are as in June, And bears do sing in tune, And horse-coursers refuse to cheat. And gluttons will refuse to eat." Sept. 1690. Husbandry. (Each month in the year contains similar directions.) "Pick hops before that they be brown; The weather fair, no dew on ground. Set slips of flowers and strawberries, Gather your saffron e'er sunrise, Sow wheat and rye, remove young trees, Make verjuice now, and kill your bees, G peas on, A collar of brawn is a New-year's tide feast, And minced pies at Christmas are chiefly in season." "The year concludes well with them that are in health, and have store of money; and very badly with those that are in prison, and know not how to get out." The second part of Poor Robin's Almanac contains a prognostication for the year, with an account of the Eclipses, the four quarters of the year, &c. in the same humorous style as the former part. He satirizes astrological predictions with such extravagant tales as the following: "Mars and Saturn are retrograde; this signifies that some strange country will be discovered, where the rivers run with Canary, the lakes and ponds filled with white wine and claret, the standing pools with muscadine, and the wells with pure hyppocras. The mountains and rocks are all sugar candy, the hillocks and mole hills loaf sugar, fowls ready roasted fly about the streets, and cloaths ready-made grow upon trees." To his description of the four quarters is appended his astrological scheme, by which he says, "a man may foretell things that never will be, as well as those that never were ;" and he goes on to enumerate his predictions, such as that "Sol being in a biquintile with Venus, this foretells that there will be several ways of making puddings, and but one of eating them." With such and much coarser mate rials is this publication composed; but we forbear multiplying quotations, lest it prove tedious to some, and offensive to others; and hasten to notice another Almanac, more generally known, for which reason a few brief remarks will suffice, as there are but very few persons to whom Moore's Almanac is not familiar, being one of those books which is thought necessary for all families; and you can scarce enter the house of a mechanic, or cottage of a husbandman, but you find it upon the same shelf with "The Practice of Piety," and "The Whole Duty of Man." The general contents, therefore, of "Vox Stellarum, or, this Loyal Almanac," needs no description in this place. Of its original projector we can collect no information. Francis Moore, according to his own account, has amused and alarmed the world with his predictions and his hieroglyphics for the space of one hundred and forty years. Aubrey says, "Lilly stole many of the hieroglyphics with which he amused the people from an old monkish manuscript. Moore, the almanacmaker, has stolen several from him, and there is no doubt but some future almanac-maker will steal them from Moore. An anecdote is told of the maker of this famous Almanac paying a visit to the editor of a rival Almanac, to endeavour to fathom the depths of his mystery, and was cunningly inquiring into the secret of his calculations, when the other bluntly exclaimed, 'I see what you are driving at, Dr. Moore! You wish to know my system. I tell you what it is. I take your Almanac, and, for every day that you predict one thing I predict the reverse; and (he continued) I am quite as often right as you are." Mr. Henry Andrews, of Royston, who was the maker, until the last few years, of this popular Almanac, received only twenty-five pounds a year from the Stationers' Company for his labours. Since the reduction of the Stamp Duty, its sale has materially increased; and I am informed that it last year amounted to the vast number of 521,000 copies.* * Of the production of the new prophet, Mr. Thomas Murphy, 75,000 copies were printed, and 70,000 sold. Mr. URBAN, Edinburgh, Dec. 10. YOUR Correspondent from Ampton, A. P. has ably and successfully applied himself to that desideratum in our history of ephemeral literature, a bibliography of Almanacs, which I ventured to suggest in your Minor Correspondence some time ago. Perhaps you may not be displeased by my intrusion, or he mislike my directing his attention to a species of Calendars not entirely devoted to astrological prediction, or hebdomadal reference, but calculated to ridicule particular sects and parties, tractates in which the utile cum dulci are ingeniously blended; in short, the "Comic Almanacs" of bygone periods. On these a very curious and amusing paper might be indited by any one possessing time and opportunity. I have little of either; but, in testimony of my good will, I devote the brief space usually allotted to my siesta to the following trifling, and, I fear me, very unsatisfactory notice of three specimens of Calendarial oddities now before me. The first is very rare, having been, I believe, carefully suppressed by those whom it specially offended,-the Roman Catholics. Its title is as follows: "The Protestant Almanack for the year, from the Incarnation of Jesus Christ 1669, our deliverance from Popery by Queen Eliz. 110. Being the first after Bissextile or Leap-year. Wherein the Bloody Aspects, Fatal Oppositions, and Pernicious Conjunctions of the Papacy, against the Lord Christ, and the Lord's Anointed, are described. With the change of the Moon, the rising and setting of the Sun, and other useful additions, as Fairs, Eclipses, &c. Calculated according to art, for the meridian of Babylon, where the Pope is elevated ninety degrees above all Reason, Right, and Religion, above Kings, Canons, Conscience, and Every Thing that is called God, 2 Thess. 2. And may, without sensible error, indifferently serve the whole Papacy. By Philoprotest, a well-willer to the Mathematicks. Cambridge: Printed for Information of Protestants, anno 1669." After the title and list of Terms there ensues an Epistle Dedicatory "for the ever honoured B. S. Esquire," consisting of 10 pages. Then the "Jesuites Coat of Arms," per pale, a bow and arrow Proper, with these lines: Arcum Nola dedit; dedit his La Flecha Sagit. tam; Illis quis nervum, quem mercure dabit ? La Fleche a dart did bring; What they deserve, a string? Then comes "" A New and Infallible Dyal to find the true Hour of the Day, when the Sun shines bright," representing a priest pendant from a gibbet, with the use and explanation of the following Solar Dyal: " "Take a Jesuite, hang him upon an approved gibbet (but be sure you snickle him fast, or else he will slip the knot by some equivocation). Let him hang in a perpendicular line without motion; then turn him gingerly towards the Sun, with his mouth open; and observe where the shadow of his Roman nose falls upon the hour lines, and then you will see the true time of the day in England. "Note, This Dyal will serve any eleva tion. Ow. Epigr. Si tuus ad Solem statuatur nasus hiante Ore; bene Ostendes Dentibus Hora quota est." Each month is illustrated by a series of Popish cruelties, pride and usurpations, miracles, treacheries, equivocations, whoredoms, principles, implicit faith and blind obedience, lies and slanders, venial sins, saints and martyrs. To the preceding is added a separate work, entitled " pismi; or, a Looking-Glass for Papists, Speculum Pawherein they may see their own sweet faces; being the Second Part of the Protestant Almanack for this year 1669." It contains "a short Chronology of papal usurpations, tyrannies, and cruelties," to the year 1669;—a "Scheme of the varieties of popish tortures ;"-and a "Catalogue of some of the most eminent marts and fairs kept in the Popedome." In the latter we find "March 25, being Lady Day, new stile, a most famous fair is kept at Halle in Brabant, which is the common empory for these staple commodities following: "1. The breeches of Joseph, without kelt or guard; they are something sleepy, it's confest, for they have not had a good nap these 1600 years: but you may have them pretty cheap, because they are something grown out of fashion. "2. A pair of slippers, the same that Christ wore, and yet they look as fresh as if they were newly rubbed off the last. They are famous for curing the gout; if, therefore, any have that distemper in their great toes, it will be worth the while to travel thither, especially if they be half-way there already." With many similar entries. "Yea and Nay Almanack, for the people called by the men of the world Quakers. Containing many needfull and necessary observations from the first day of the first month, till the last day of the twelfth month. Being the Bissextile or Leaping Year. Calculated properly for the meridian of the Bull and Mouth within Aldersgate, and may indifferently serve for any other meeting-house what or wheresoever. The very fourth edition. London, printed for the Company of Stationers, 1680." This Almanac is truly a very amusing production. The "Second Part,' " London, printed by Anne Godbid, and John Playford, for the Company of Stationers, 1680," is even scarcer than the former; and contains a laughable account "of a very sad disaster that befell two wet friends, coming home very late, in Gray's-inn-lane."My time and space only allow me to transcribe the following "Enthusiasms on the Twelfth Month" (February) from the "Yea and Nay Almanack." "The stars do predict that all those who are troubled with agues will prove Quakers, and that about the 14 day many shall fall into love, even as a fly falls into a hony-pot; this shallamaze many ffriends, and make them believe that marriage is a sweet thing, but lighting on an untoward sister, it proves as bitter as gall, or the herb called wormwood; therefore, Friends, have a care of marrying a shrew, nay, rather than yoak your selves to such a one, better doe as the men of the world doe on the 23 and 24 dayes of this month, eat pan-cakes and fritters, for they are more comfortable to the belly, then marrying a shrew is comfortable to the heart. Men talk very much of honesty, but because they use but little, we do not think they mean as they say. Let not the greatbellied Sistern now long for strawberries or cherries, for I assure ye they are very hard to come by; money also will be hard to come by; and when you have it, if you have not the more care, as slippery to hold as a wet eel by the tail. If you hear now of some old men getting young females with child, think it not strange; but impute it to the cock-broth eaten by them, made of the carcasses of those fowls unmercifully slaughtered by the boys on the 23 and 24 days of this month." Should the above prove anyways interesting, I shall be happy to communicate whatever, either on this or other literary antiquities, may chance to fall under my notice. Yours, &c. W.B.D.D. TURnbull. NEQUE Scriptor est ullus," says Professor Wyttenbach, "" ex totâ antiquitate eruditâ, Cicerone præstantior, neque ex omnibus iis viris, qui post restituta bonarum literarum studia, in eo expoliendo emendandoque operam posuerunt suam, quisquam anteferri debet Joanni Aug. Ernesto." Now, if we may be permitted to adopt the method of expression used in the above paragraph, we should say, that of all writers who have treated on the subject of Trees and Plants, none have equalled Mr. Loudon in copiousness of information, in variety of materials, in accuracy of detail, in the unwearied |