4, 8.All that you can.1, 2, 7.Lost labour.
9.What you desire.3, 5, 6.On the losing side.
13, 14.Both heart and hand.10, 11, 12.All for your harm.
17, 18.A fast friend.
21, 22, 23.Well ventured.15, 16.Nothing to your purpose.
28, 29.Through the briers.19, 20.But hard hap.
30, 31.Past hope of recovery.24, 25, 26, 27.Unfit for thy purpose.

Early in the reign of Charles I., the first commercial almanac was published. It may be called the first Poor Richard. It contained tables of interest, necessary tables of expenses, pithy proverbs inculcating frugality and industry, and the usual melange of astrology and medicine. About the same time the religious almanac appeared. A rigid Puritan called Ranger was its editor. It is a gloomy production.

In Cromwell’s time, the almanacs are of a religious character; all receipts and directions end ‘sermonwise.’ The famous William Lilly was at this time the prince of astrologists and almanac-makers. At first, he prophesied for the king. But he was shrewd enough to see, without casting any horoscope, whose star was in the ascendant; and very soon all the stars in their courses fought against Charles.

As a matter of statecraft, James did a wise thing when he legalised astrology. Almanacs have always had a great influence with the mass; and it was a subtle device to give the liberty of prophesying after that legitimate fashion which should gloss with superstition ‘the divine right of kings.’ But the universities finally grew ashamed of their connection with the almanac, and sold their rights to the Stationers’ Company. This Company was always on the side of the ruling power. It had prophesied for Charles, and it had prophesied for Cromwell. It sang Te Deum for the Restoration, as it had done for the Protectorate. It dated its little books from the year ‘of our deliverance by King William from popery and arbitrary government;’ and it invoked the blessing of the planets on the last of the Stuarts.

When Lilly died, the Company employed his pupil Gadbury; and when Gadbury died, his relative, Job Gadbury, prophesied through another generation of credulous dupes. Then came the infamous John Partridge, who was pilloried by Swift’s wicked wit in 1709. But at that time he had been prophesying for the Stationers’ Company forty years. After Swift’s attack, he refused to predict, and the Company, who did not like to be laughed out of the profits of his reputation, published an almanac which had Partridge’s name to it, but which Partridge never wrote. This almanac was still dragging on an existence in 1828, with the sins of a century and a half on its head. Francis Moore began his career of imposture in 1698, and Poor Robin, the ribald hoary jester of the Company, about the same time. A dozen years after the Restoration, it also published a Yea and Nay Almanac for the People called by the men of the world, Quakers. A more atrocious libel on their faith and morals it is impossible to imagine.

In 1775, an enterprising bookseller called Carnan became possessed with the idea that this corporation had no legal right to its monopoly in almanacs, and he published one of his own. The Company sent him to prison as regularly as he sold his annual commodities; but Carnan was not a man to be put down. It is said he always kept a clean shirt in his pocket, ready for a decent appearance before the magistrates; and at length the Common Pleas decided in his favour. Then the Stationers’ Company appealed to Lord North; and as that minister wanted prophecies to make the war against the American colonies popular, he brought in a bill to the House of Commons re-investing the Company with the monopoly which had been declared illegal. The two universities also—which had an annuity from the Company—used all their influence against the solitary bookseller. But he had a good cause, and he had Erskine to plead it; and he triumphed.

When the French Revolution came, Moore was more terrific in his prophecies and more awful in his hieroglyphics than ever. The people wondered and trembled, and the sale of this almanac reached a point without parallel in the annals of imposture. But the continent of Europe had a rival even to Moore in the famous almanac of Liége. A tradition ascribes it first to a canon who lived in 1590. Its early numbers are published ‘with the permission of the superior powers;’ the later ones are content with ‘the favour of His Highness.’ It is full of political predictions. In 1700, a French almanac called the Almanach Royal started a new idea, the one which has since made the Almanach de Gotha so famous—it gave the names and birthdays of all the princes and princesses in Europe, lists of clergy, bar, army, and diplomatic corps. The latter almanac has been brought to a high pitch of perfection, and contains a vast amount of valuable and well-assorted information.

Shortly after these French almanacs, there appeared a famous American one—the Poor Richard of Dr Franklin. He did not care to put his name upon the title-page, and therefore it was duly credited to Richard Saunders. It was published from 1733 to 1757, and was a great financial success. It is now a rare book; a correspondent in Notes and Queries mentions one sold in Philadelphia for fifty-two dollars.

In 1828, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge took the almanac in hand. Then the Stationers’ Company, perceiving that the day of ignorance was dying and that decency would pay, issued a really excellent one, called The Englishman. Yet superstition dies hard. Only sixty years ago, the popular feeling was tested by leaving out of Moore’s almanac that mysterious column showing the influence of the moon on the different parts of the body. But the editors, being prudent men, only issued one hundred thousand copies of this emendation, and the result showed their wisdom. The omission was at once detected and resented; nearly the whole issue was returned to the publishers, and they were compelled to reprint the column, in order to retain their popularity.

On the Repeal of the Stamp Act in 1834, almanacs started on their course unfettered. One of the few that now deal in prognostications of a political kind is Zadkiel’s. The comic almanac is a purely modern feature of the little book—the pleasant wrinkle added by the nineteenth century. Cruikshank, and those witty clever souls who were the original staff of Punch, began the laugh, which America in several publications of this kind has re-echoed. And it is hard to say where this pushing, progressive, irresistible little book will not go. The divine, the lawyer, the physician, the merchant, have all their special almanacs. There are nautical, military, and literary almanacs. We cannot buy a box of note-paper but we find one in it; our perfumer sends it to us scented; our newspaper gives us one illustrated. With such a cosmopolitan temper, and such a universal adaptability, it may yet become the year-book of all nations, and the annual balance-sheet of the world’s progress.