194 POCKET ALMANACKS AT RENISHAW. 



final judgment upon it, and should consign it either to the flames 

 or to the Muniment Room. However trivial the jottings, however 

 commonplace the facts recorded, nothing could appeal more 

 strongly to the imagination which bridges over the past, than a 

 relic which had thus for a whole year been the sleeping partner in 

 some career great in history or in literature. A little collection of 

 half a dozen pocket almanacks of great men — say, for choice, of 

 Milton, Cromwell, Addison, Pope, Swift, Pepys, and Walton — 

 might, perhaps, have been brought together by any book-collector 

 of the middle of last century, who had been willing to devote a 

 little time and money to the quest. The chance was lost ; and 

 though there is, if I remember right, an almanack in the British 

 Museum library, which contains an account by an eye-witness of 

 the execution of Charles the First, I have never heard of the 

 existence of any other having the least claim to literary or 

 historical interest. 



In one of the Derbyshire Visitations, the name of Richard 

 AUestree, Astrologer, is entered in the pedigree of the AUestrees 

 of Alvaston ; and an amusing article might be strung together out 

 of the almanacks compiled by a sage, who demonstrated his own 

 wisdom by taking a measure of the folly of his countrymen, and, 

 no doubt, filled his own pockets by filling theirs. Almanacks in 

 general have been written about often and well ; * it is, however, 

 to be regretted that sheet and pocket almanacks have not been 

 treated separately, and that no one has searched the dramatists of 

 the Restoration, in order to discover the particular pocket which 

 custom had devoted to their use, and the occasions on which they 

 were consulted. 



Out of the various boxes of manuscripts at Renishaw I have 

 collected the following almanacks : 



Rider's " British Merlin," 167 1, owned by Thomas Kent. 



Rider's " British Merlin," 1682, „ George Sitwell. 



* British Quarterly, \o\. xxviii. ; Retrospective Revie^u, vol. xviii. ; Antiquary, 

 N. S., ii. ; Companion to the British Atmanacky 29, 46, and 39, 40 ; Galaxy, 

 vol. xxiii. ; Putnam, vol. iv. ; Gentletnad s Magazine Library (Bibliographical 

 notes), 1889, p. 99 ; Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, ii., 79. 



