Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/39



N obedience to your lordship's commands, as well as to satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly after Partridge the almanackmaker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should die the 29th instant about eleven at night of a raging fever. I had some sort of knowledge of him, when I was employed in the revenue, because he used every year to present me with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of some little gratuity we gave him. I saw him accidentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and