NEXT to thefe learned men are to be found thofe who, during their lives, profeffed judicial Aftrology: ! thofe drawers of horoscopes, those Prognofticators of good or bad fortune, thofe almanack-makers; in a word, thofe men who made an occupation in this world of amusing fools, of living and enriching themselves at their expence, by felling a number of impoftures which they cannot help laughing at amongst themselves t. At the very head of this fet of idle ftory-tellers we must place those who, wanting to render even the Saviour of the world subje& to their imaginary art, have pretended to find written in the ftars, not only his birth, but also all the facred myfteries of his life.

BUT it would be hard indeed, if this kind of people should be held now-a-days in the fame rank of esteem, or if the fame degree of credulity was to be shewn in hell for them, and for their knowledge, as mankind formerly gave into here above. This art is not only become suspected there, but their pretended prophecies are regarded only as* fo many falfhoods, whofe impofition is thoroughly proved,

+ This pretended science, which is nothing but a mere piece of quackery, was very much in vogue at the time our author wrote; but has now no partisans, excepting among old women, the vulgar, and the il

literate.

L

proved, and whofe abfurdity is as univerfally laughed at. They are there fhewn, that, as the revoluti on of the Platonic year is, as yet, very far from be ing complete §, there is no kind of neceffity for knowing either the exact number of the ftars, or their position in the Heavens, with any other view than that of curiofity or improvement, or with regard to that admiration which ought to be paid to all the works of the creation. There are they taught, that the Heavens are replenished with an infinite number of ftars; which, from their extreme apparent smallness, not only are out of the sphere of their speculative fcience, but even escape the observation of the moft exact and laborious aftronomers. Such, for a long time, were thofe which composed that broad and luminous band, that appears during the ferene nights, in abfence of the moon; and which we diftinguish by the name of the Milky-Way † : that, befides,

The Platonic year, or grand period of the Platonifts, is a revolution of thirty-fix thousand years, in which those philofophers inform us the stars and planets will be found again in their first places, their firft order, and their firft difpofition.

It is called by the aftronomers the Galaxy, from a Greek word which fignifies the fame. It is composed of an infinite number of stars which cannot be distinctly observed, but by the help of the very best telescopes.

fides, there are from time to time new ones perceived, whilst others disappear, and never more are feen. In short, when once they arrive at the infernal regions, they are fenfible, that all the different afpects of the planets, and all the influences, good or bad, which they attribute to them, as to the lives or fortunes of mankind (as if thefe immoderate and inanimate maffes could be fufceptible of love or hatred) are there confidered in the light they merit; but as fo many fables: and that the feripture, in mentioning the ftars, which are the work of God's immedi ate hand, affure us, with regard to them, as well as with refpect to all the reft, that their Creator "faw "them, and they were very good;" nor have they from the inftant of their firft creation met with a change, or altered in their courfes. In hell these frivolous aftrologers become convinced, of what, indeed, they must have known already, that their pre-. dictions are all of the fame tenor with that they made in 1554; when, on pretence that all the planets would be in conjunction in the fign of Pifces, (Aquarius might, perhaps, have better ferved their purpose) they took upon them to foretell, that there would happen an almoft univerfal deluge. A deluge which the leaft appearance of has never yet been feen, or even the smallest fymptom of it ever heard of. Here too they learn, that though amidst the myriads of predictions they undertake, it must ine vitably happen that fome of trifling confequence

muft

2 must come to pafs; as in the aims taken by a thou

1

fand archers, though all unskilled, fome one may,

by chance, hit the mark; yet, notwithstanding this, they are no less, nor are they lefs reckoned, impoftors; nor have they the leaft right to make exceptions to that general parallel, "As great a liar as an "almanack-maker or a fortune-teller."

CHA P. V.

Concerning critics, and their bufinefs in Hell.

THE

fub

HE race of critics occupy not only the worst are place in the infernal academy, but they are badly paid, although they work laboriously upon jects no lefs difficult than interefting. Some kind of judgment may be formed of them, by the patterns that I place here, which are the subject of their most learned and voluminous lucubrations.

IN fome of them they fearch and examine, with all the fagacity, erudition and prolixity they are able, into how many books Livy has divided his Roman history. In others, how many comedies Ennius, Menander, Ariftophanes, Terence, and Plautus; or how many tragedies Sophocles, Euripides, Efchy

lus,

lus +, and Seneca, compofed. In fome of their works, their examinations turn on the discovery of which fingular piece of the fame author ought to bear away the prize from all the reft. In others their researches terminate in the enquiry, whether we ought to write Harufpices or Arruspices, Virgil or Vergil, Shakespeare or Shakspear, Johnston or Jonfon.

THERE

+ A Greek poet, who was looked upon as the father, or at leaft the reformer of the Greek tragedy. He was of one of the most illuftrious families of Attica, and had borne arms with great reputation at the battles of Marathon, Salamine, and Platea. Being from his youth addicted to tragedy, he compofed ninety-seven pieces; of which only seven remain, and even those imperfect. The representation of thefe pieces is faid to have been so terrible, that on the first performance of his Eumenides, feveral child. ren died with fear, and feveral women miscarried. Towards the decline of his life, he retired to the court of Heiro, king of Syracuse; being piqued that Sophocles, who was but juft then started into notice, had been preferred before him by the Athenians. He was killed by an eagle's letting fall a tortoise. (which that bird had, according to its cuftom, carri ed up into the air) upon his bald head, which it thought to be a ftone fit for the purpose of breaking the fhell, in order to get at its flesh.