MISS FANNY'S THEATRE

IN

COCK-LANE.

By particular Defire of feveral perfons of Quality, To-morrow Evening, being the 14th Inftant will be performed,

AN ENTERTAINMENT

O.F

SCRATCHING AND KNOCKING, OF THREE ACT S.

EACH ACT TO CONCLUDE WITH

FLUTTER.

A

Bed 10s. 6d.

Chairs 55.

Standing 2s. 6d.

To begin precifely at Twelve o'clock.

No Money to be returned after the firft Scratch, and nothing under the Full Price will be taken.

Vivant, &c.

EPIGRA M.

On the long Delay of a promised Poem called

THE AUTHOR.

BUT where is this Author, was promis'd so long From Churchill, that giant so stout and so strong? He's fick, Sir, fays one,-He's burnt out cries another, And the high flame of genius finks down into fmother. Like the Ghost in Cock-lane, he has frighten'd us all, And knock'd us, and scratch'd us, the great and the fmall;

-

But now of his Spirit no more we're afraid,

For Parfon and Fanny together are laid.

To the PRINTER of the ST. JAMES'S CHRONICLE.

Mr. Baldwin,

YOUR

Thursday, May 20, 1762.

OUR true-born Englishmen, your bold Britons, who are lions in the field, and fea lions on the ocean, are, with all their courage, the most remarkable of any nation in the world, for being feized with a Panick. A battle loft, or an island taken, brings down their high spirits in an inftant, and the nation is undone. An eclipfe, or a comet with the help of fome profound philofopher in the magazines, or two or three terrifying paragraphs in the News-papers, fhall fill the imagination of all the old women, of both fexes, with horrible apprehenfions of the immediate deftruction of the world; and groaning profelytes pour in, without number, to Tottenham-Court and Moorfields It is ftill fresh in our memories, that two flight shocks of an earthquake, the most violent of which never shook the pewter off the kitchenhelves in Grosvenor-Square, turned the minds of the bold Britons topfy-turvy, and all London itself seemed going out of town. In fhort, the fpirits rife and fall, in the barometer of English imaginations, with most incredible revolutions. Their

Their hopes, unless perpetually buoyed up by profperous circumftances, are fure to fink. Publick Opinions are as delicate as Publick Credit; and it feems as impoffible for Englishmen to preferve a manly evenness of temper, as to keep the stocks at par. These reflections occurred on obferving the terror, that has diffused itself through moft families, on account of the prefent Epidemical Diftemper; for fo, Mr. Baldwin, you, and the reft of your brother newfmongers, have taught us to call it. They, into whofe hands our journals may fall in foreign countries, muft fuppofe that a plague is raging amongst us. The bills of mortality, fay they, are confiderably fwelled in their number; ten are buried in one grave: four or five in a family are carried off in one day; with other particulars, which every body believes though nobody knows to be true. It is fuppofed that there must be fome noxious quality in the air, and pieces of beef are fent up from Highgate Hill, at the tail of fchool-boys kites; though it is the received doctrine of writers on all plagues, that any peftilential quality in the air affects dogs, horfes, and other animals, before it reaches men, and would confequently fhew itself on the live ox, as well as the dead piece of beef. For my part, as a true Briton, I cannot help being

moft

1

moft fenfibly offended, that Beef, the staple food of old England, Beef, the glory of our country, fhould be proftituted to fuch purposes. In a time of war, when provifions of all kinds grow dearer and dearer every day, when the price is artfully raised on meat, and fish is obliged to be brought to town in the machine of Arts and Sciences, I am alarmed, left this prodigality fhould be the means, or at least serve the butchers as a pretence, for raifing the price of meat ftill higher; and my apprehenfions are redoubled, when my maid affures me, on coming from market, that broth being univerfally prescribed in the prefent reigning disorder, fcraigs of mutton are grown fo much in requeft, that the worst end fells for fix-pence and feven-pence per pound.

In the mean time, to keep our terrors alive, and to prevent the Panick from fubfiding in the minds of the people, all the Doctors who are authors, begin to tell us from the prefs, that colds caught at this feafon are extremely dangerous; and all the bookfellers who are venders of the medicines, recommend their noftrums by fifty different artifices, inferted in advertisements, letters, paragraphs, &c.And here, Mr. Baldwin, I cannot but obferve by the bye what you, who are a prin

ter,

ter, muft often have obferved yourself, and know to be true, that the connection between author and bookfeller, is as infeparable as that between whore and bawd, a justice and his clerk, a counsellor and attorney, or (according to Congreve) a curate and a tobacco-ftopper ;-that this connection, I fay, has of late years, begun to difplay itfelf in a new light: for fince the doctors have pretty generally become authors, bookfellers and printers have acted as a kind of baftard fpecies of apothecaries. In the natural courfe of trade and fhop-keeping, one would as foon think of fending for a pot of porter to the grocer's, or a leg of mutton to the tallow-chandler's, as for a pill, drop, or an electuary, to the printing-office; or for a powder, a balfam, or an elixir, to the bookfeller's. Yet fo it is, medicines and pamphlets are prepared and written by one and the fame hand, and both publifhed (for that I find is the phrase in each case) at one and the fame fhop. Two fuch ranks of men in combination, who are each of them perpetually addreffing the publick, have opportunities, like mountebank-practisers, to hawk their own medicines. It is their intereft in the first place, to perfuade you that you are fick, or that you will be fick; and in the next place, to perfuade you

that.