g of the
year.

To mention no more of their impertinent predictions: What have we to
do with their advertisements about pills and drink for the venereal
disease? 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 employ'd most part of my time in adjusting and correcting the
calculations I made 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. For these two last years I have not failed in above one or two
particulars, and those of no very great moment. I exactly foretold the
miscarriage at Toulon, with all its particulars; and the loss of Admiral
Shovel, tho' I was mistaken as to the day, placing that accident about
thirty-six hours sooner than it happen'd; but upon reviewing my schemes,
I quickly found the cause of that error. I likewise foretold the Battle
of Almanza to the very day and hour, with the loss on both sides, and
the consequences thereof. All which I shewed to some friends many months
before they happened, that is, I gave them papers sealed up, to open at
such a time, after which they were at liberty to read them; and there
they found my predictions true in every article, except one or two, very
minute.

As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I forbore
to publish them till I had perused the several almanacks for the year we
are now enter'd on. I find them in all the usual strain, and I beg the
reader will compare their manner with mine: And here I make bold to tell
the world, that I lay the whole credit of my art upon the truth of these
predictions; and I will be content, that Partridge, and the rest of his
clan, may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I fail in any singular
particular of moment. I believe, any man who reads this paper, will look
upon me to be at least a person of as much honesty and understanding, as
a common maker of almanacks. I do not lurk in the dark; I am not wholly
unknown in the world; I have set my name at length, to be a mark of
infamy to mankind, if they shall find I deceive them.

In one thing I must desire to be forgiven, that I talk more sparingly