ADVERTISEMENT.
"The best time to cut hair. How moles and dreams are to be interpreted. When most proper season to bleed. Under what aspect of the moon best to draw teeth, and cut corns. Pairing of nails, on what day unlucky. What the kindest sign to graft or inoculate in; to open bee-hives, and kill swine. How many hours boiling my Lady Kent's pudding requires. With other notable questions, fully and faithfully resolved, by me Sylvester Patridge, student in physic and astrology, near the Gun in Moorfields."
"Of whom likewise may be had, at reasonable rates, trusses, antidotes, elixirs, love-powders. Washes for freckles, plumpers, glass-eyes, false calves and noses, ivory-jaws, and a new receipt to turn red hair into black."
Old Robin's almanack was evidently the best of the time, and free from all the astrological cant with which Patridge's Merlinus Liberatus was filled; against which Poor Robin did not a little declaim. The motto to his title runs thus:—
"We use no weather-wise predictions
Nor any such-like airy fictions;
But (which we think is much the best)
Write the plain truth, or crack a jest:
And (without any further pretence)
Confess we write, and think of the pence:
For that's the aim of all who write,
Profit to gain, mixed with delight."
Poor old Robin attacked the astrologers of his day with no little vehemence: "How different a task is it," says he, "for man to behave so in this world as to please all the people that inhabit it! A man who makes use of his best endeavours to please every body is sure to please but very few, and by that means displease a great many; which may very possibly be the case with poor Robin this year. But (be that as it will) old Bob is sometimes well pleased, when rogues, prick-eared coxcombs, fools, and such like, are the most displeased at him: be it therefore known, that it is only men of sense and integrity, (whether they have much money or no money) that he has any, (the least) regard for: I see very plainly, that an humble man is (generally) accounted base; if otherwise, he is esteemed proud; a bold look is looked upon as impudence; if modest, (then to be sure) he must be hypocritical; if his behaviour is grave, it is owing to a sullenness of temper; if affable, he is but little regarded; if strictly just, then cruel must be his character; but, if merciful and forbearing, then (of consequence) a silly, sheepish-headed fool! Now, I challenge all the ASS-TROLOGERS and CONJURERS, throughout the whole kingdom, to demonstrate that all the whimsey-headed opinions which different men retain of different actions, together with their being so vastly different at different times, one from another; I say, I call upon them ALL to prove, that they are (wholly) owing to the STARRY influences! There being, (I believe) in general as many different ideas and conceptions in the mind of mankind, as there are variety of complexions and countenances."
His observations on the four unequal quarters of the year, as he terms them, are no less satirical, humorous, and full of truth, and so much in "opposition" with others of the trade, that poor old Robin, in good sense and trite remarks, carries away the palm from all his predecessors and contemporaries; indeed, he is so little of an astrologer, that, instead of consulting the angles, aspects, conjunctions and trines, of the planets, he is vulgar enough to attach more importance to the substantials and doings of this nether world. We present our readers with the following as a specimen, which, though in his usual way, a little rough-mouthed, occasionally is free from that almanack-cant which characterises the vocations of his fellow-labourers in the same field.