[216] _Works_, ed. Gosse, ii. 139. [217] See especially Kearsley’s _Strangers’ Guide_ (1793?). [218] This was the number about 1793. [219] Burney says that the first organist was Keeble, who was succeeded by Butler. Burney himself was organist in 1770. [220] Boswell, _Life_, chap. xxvi. p. 236, ed. Croker. [221] _Life_, 1777–1778, chap. lxi. p. 561, ed. Croker. [222] In the early days, sometimes one shilling and two shillings, including the breakfast and the morning concert. On special nights when fireworks were displayed, the price was raised to three shillings or more. Tickets costing from half a guinea to two guineas were issued for the masquerades. [223] Sometimes it was advertised as open “every evening.” People were allowed to walk in the gardens and view the Rotunda during the day-time for one shilling. [224] “Harlequin in Ranelagh,” _London Magazine_, May 1774. [225] Cp. _Gent. Mag._ 1764, p. 247. [226] _Ranelagh House: a satire_, 1747. [227] _London Magazine_, 1774. [228] Other early vocalists were:--Mrs. Storer (1751); Miss Young (1755); Miss Formantel (_Ten favourite songs sung by Miss Formantel at Ranelagh_, music by Mr. Oswald, published July 1758). [229] According to a statement of Burney’s (note in Croker’s ed. of Boswell’s _Johnson_, p. 143, anno “1763”), the salt-box song was sung by Beard accompanied on that instrument by Brent, the fencing master, while Skeggs played on the broomstick as bassoon. Croker assigns the composition, and apparently the first performance, of the Ode to 1769, and states that the first edition (which he himself had seen) of it bears the date 1749, a date which he considered to be a misprint for 1769. But the date 1769 is, as some later writers have seen, clearly erroneous, and the composition--and possibly the _first_ performance at Ranelagh--must be assigned to 1759. The published edition of the Ode, in the British Museum, is dated (May) 1763, and the Ode was undoubtedly performed at Ranelagh on 10 June of that year (1763). (See _Annual Register_; _Lloyd’s Evening Post_, 8–16 June, 1763.) [230] Cp. _Six new English songs composed by Ferdinando Tenducci, and to be sung by him at Ranelagh_. Sold by the author at his lodging in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, 1763 (W. Coll.). Other performers at this period were:--1762: Champness, Hudson, Miss Thomas, Miss Brent. 1763: Dearle, Miss Wright, Miss Brent. 1765 (?): the elder Fawcett. [231] _Gent. Mag._ 1767, p. 277. [232] Walpole’s _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, ii. 150, ff. (Walpole to Mann, 3 May, 1749). [233] It is to be feared that this advertisement was an invention of the editor’s, but it would have had little point for his readers had it not been actually based on familiar incidents of the Ranelagh masquerades. [234] Mrs. Baddeley also sang there in 1772.