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Updated: June 3, 2025
BICKERSTAFF spoke altogether by guess, and knew no more what will happen this year than I did myself." I told him, "His discourse surprised me, and I would be glad he were in a state of health to be able to tell me, what reason he had, to be convinced of Mr. BICKERSTAFF's ignorance."
Steele at first wrote the entire paper and signed his essays with the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, which had been made famous by Swift a few years before. Addison is said to have soon recognized one of his own remarks to Steele, and the secret of the Authorship was out. From that time Addison was a regular contributor, and occasionally other writers added essays on the new social life of England.
"He would have served Homer just so if he were here and reading his own works." Kenrick, Goldsmith's old enemy, travestied this anecdote in the following lines, pretending that the poet had compared his countryman Bickerstaff to Homer. "What are your Bretons, Romans, Grecians, Compared with thoroughbred Milesians!
In substance, it was as follows: "My first prediction is but a trifle; it relates to Partridge, the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity, and find that he will die on the Twenty-ninth day of March, next." This was signed, "Isaac Bickerstaff," and duly issued in pamphlet form. It had such an air of sincerity that both the believers and the scoffers read it with interest.
They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all good Christians, by assuring them again and again that they were the First, Original, True, and undisputed 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.
His writings have been well compared to those light wines which, though deficient in body and flavour, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too far. Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours.
This called forth from SWIFT: A VINDICATION OF ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq., &c. MR. PARTRIDGE hath been lately pleased to treat me after a very rough manner, in that which is called his Almanack for the present year. Such usage is very undecent from one Gentleman to another, and does not at all contribute to the discovery of Truth, which ought to be the great End in all disputes of the Learned.
The pamphlet is a quizzical satire on the almanac-makers, very much in the spirit of Swift's Bickerstaff "Predictions" a hundred years later. Of more importance was a preface contributed in this same year to Sir Philip Sidney's posthumous "Astrophel and Stella."
This had been for many generations, the whole that had happened in the family of Sam Bickerstaff, till the time of my present cousin Samuel, the father of the young people we have just now spoken of.
When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays I knew nothing of the subjects of them; nay, much later, and but the other day, as it were, in the beginning of the reign of George III., when Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the Globe, when Garrick was in his glory, and Reynolds was over head and ears with his portraits, and Sterne brought out the volumes of Tristram Shandy year by year, it was without consulting me: I had not the slightest intimation of what was going on: the debates in the House of Commons on the American War, or the firing at Bunker's Hill, disturbed not me: yet I thought this no evil I neither ate, drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain: I had not then looked out into this breathing world, yet I was well; and the world did quite as well without me as I did without it!
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