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