THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



VOL. XIII.] JANUARY, 1832. [No. 73, 



TOM MOORE'S PROPHETIC ALMANACK FOR THE YEAR 1832. 



cannot resist a very natural temptation to afford the place of 

 honour, in our New Year's number, to an article of such peculiar claims, 

 as that with which the Poet of all circles, and the Prophet of ours, has 

 so flatteringly favoured us. To look back at the close of a year, is one 

 thing ; to look forward, is another : to take a sort of Parthian glance at 

 the panorama of the past, is within the reach of every matter-of-fact 

 moralizer ; but to dive into the mysteries of a year that has hardly yet 

 dawned upon the world to pluck the pearl from the oyster before a shell 

 has been formed to unravel the decrees of Destiny before she has made 

 up her mind about them and, in short, to tell all the news of the New 

 Year before an event of it has happened is to evince an ultra-rail-road, 

 extra-steam-engine, and super-Osbaldiston sort of celerity, that will not 

 fail, we trust, of due appreciation. Fudge and Francis Moore, physi- 

 cian, have had their day. We mean to have a Moore of our own ; and 

 having long had the profits on our side, we will see what is to be done 

 in the way of prediction. Now if only one of these our predictions 

 should come to pass, it will be sufficient to stamp our character as 

 prophets of the first water ; and place us at least a thousand miles higher 

 on the steep of fame, than any foreteller of futurity that ever crossed a 

 palm, or perpetrated a pamplet. The only doubt we have as to the ful- 

 filment of these prophecies, collectively and individually, is, that the 

 world itself may come to an untimely end before the year arrives at a 

 natural one. With that, however, we have nothing to do nor, indeed, 

 with the fulfilment of our predictions at all. The business of a true 

 prophet is simply to prophecy ; fulfilment is an after-affair. To the 

 public, who have been promised all possible and impossible things for 

 the last fifty years, including an exemption from taxes and a millenium, 

 we may say with the philosophic fortune-teller of Goldsmith " What ! 

 only a lord and a 'squire for two shillings ! Why, I'll promise you a 

 prince and a nabob for half the money."] 



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