ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, PHYSICIAN AND ASTROLOGER.



I.--THE STAFFIAN RACE.

From my own Apartment, May, 4, 17O9.

Of all the vanities under the sun, I confess that of being proud of
one's birth is the greatest. At the same time, since in this
unreasonable age, by the force of prevailing custom, things in which
men have no hand are imputed to them; and that I am used by some
people as if Isaac Bickerstaff, though I write myself Esquire, was
nobody: to set the world right in that particular, I shall give you
my genealogy, as a kinsman of ours has sent it me from the Heralds'
Office. It is certain, and observed by the wisest writers, that
there are women who are not nicely chaste, and men not severely
honest, in all families; therefore let those who may be apt to raise
aspersions upon ours please to give us as impartial an account of
their own, and we shall be satisfied. The business of heralds is a
matter of so great nicety that, to avoid mistakes, I shall give you
my cousin's letter, verbatim, without altering a syllable.

"DEAR COUSIN,
"Since you have been pleased to make yourself so famous of late
by your ingenious writings, and some time ago by your learned
predictions; since Partridge, of immortal memory, is dead and gone,
who, poetical as he was, could not understand his own poetry; and,