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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: the utmost scorn and contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe
gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in
parliament, poring in Partridge's almanack, to find out the
events of the year at home and abroad; not daring to propose a
hunting-match, till Gadbury or he have fixed the weather.
I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of
the fraternity, to be not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if
I do not produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks, to
convince any reasonable man, that they do not so much as
understand common grammar and syntax; that they are not able to
spell any word out of the usual road, nor even in their prefaces
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