kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not
possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors
who set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have
contended that the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and
ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon
human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent
his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees
in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean
illiterate traders between us and the stars, who import a yearly
stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer
to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from
no greater a height than their own brains.

I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of
this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at
present than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned
men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as
undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals: to which if we add
that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned,
having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or
at least did not succeed in their applications, their testimony
will not be of much weight to its disadvantage, since they are
liable to the common objection of condemning what they did not
understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the art, when I
see the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the
Philomaths, and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with
the utmost scorn and contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe
gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in