The works of Mr. Thomas Brown, serious and comical : in prose and verse, with his remains in four volumes compleat; vol. IIBrown, Thomas
General
The works of Mr. Thomas Brown, serious and comical : in prose and verse, with his remains in four volumes compleat; vol. II
Brown, Thomas
English wit and humor -- Early works to 1800; Erotic literature -- Early works to 1800; Latin literature -- Translations into English
Fortune-teller, as the best of them; nay better, if he knows but to use
his tongue like a smoothing-plane, and can take down the roughness of
some peoples incredulity, then may he work them as he does his
deal-boards, till he has glu’d or nail’d them fast to his own interest.
These are the talents for which I hear you are famous above other
Astrologers, and that by downright dint of craft, pout and banter, you
have wheedled more money in your time out of chamber-maids,
cook-wenches, old bawds, midwives, nurses, and young strumpets, than
ever was got by the rug and leather, luck in a bag, or that in most
excellent juggle on the cards, call’d_ preaching the parson: _nay if all
the gains that you have made of these three profitable inventions were
to be join’d together; besides a whole mustard-pot full of
broad-pieces, a drudging-box full of guineas, a meal-tub full of crowns
and half crowns, and an old powdering-tub full of shillings and
sixpences, which lie parcel’d up in your own house, I hear that you have
several hundreds of pounds in the_ Stationers _company, which, besides
the interest of the money, entitles you every year to four good dinners
in the hall, as many noddles full of rare claret, and four pockets full
of venison-pasty for your female deputy, who is said to be a notable
understrapper to you in the business of Astrology, and is of as much
service to you as a second to a merry-andrew, for without the one, the
other could do nothing_.
_I cannot but highly approve of the method I observe in your almanacks,
for since you write every year four_, i. e. _three in other persons
names, and one in your own, you have wisely projected a way to be
infallibly right in your predictions of the weather, which are commonly
varied under no more than four several denominations in any one of the
four seasons; so that by making your prognostications in every almanack
different, one must certainly tell right, and by keeping all four in
your pocket, which I am inform’d you have cunning enough to take care
of, by plucking out that which you know is agreeable and falls right,
declaring yourself to be the author, you gain reputation, and by this
juggle make some fools in your company believe that you have the stars
at more command, than a Haberdasher of dead bodies has his linkmen at a
funeral. This piece of cunning none of the celestial fraternity can
justly blame you for, every artist well knowing a juggler and an
astrologer are as inseperable companions as a bawd and a midwife, or a
lawyer and a knave, for either without the other, like an adjective
without a substantive, would be unable to stand by himself._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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