'the then Ministry, who loved a little persecution well enough, was, however, so wise as not to disturb their madness, and only ordered one Powell, the master of a famous Puppet-Show, to make Punch turn Prophet; which he did so well, that it soon put an end to the prophets and their prophecies. The obscure Dr Sacheverell's fortune was made by a parliamentary prosecution' (from Feb. 27 to March 23, 1709-10) 'much about the same time the French Prophets were totally extinguished by a Puppet-Show' (Misc. Works, ed. Maty., Vol. II, p. 523, 555). This was the Powell who played in Covent Garden during the time of week-day evening service, and who, taking up Addison's joke against the opera from No. 5 of the 'Spectator', produced 'Whittington and his Cat' as a rival to 'Rinaldo and Armida'. [See also a note to No. 31.]] * * * * * ADVERTISEMENT. On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the Hay-market, an Opera call'd 'The Cruelty of Atreus'. N.B. The Scene wherein Thyestes eats his own Children, is to be performed by the famous Mr Psalmanazar, [1] lately arrived from Formosa; The whole Supper being set to Kettle-drums. R. [Footnote 1: George Psalmanazar, who never told his real name and precise birthplace, was an impostor from Languedoc, and 31 years old in 1711. He had been educated in a Jesuit college, where he heard stories of the Jesuit missions in Japan and Formosa, which suggested to him how he might thrive abroad as an interesting native. He enlisted as a soldier, and had in his character of Japanese only a small notoriety until, at Sluys, a dishonest young chaplain of Brigadier Lauder's Scotch regiment, saw through the trick and favoured it, that he might recommend himself to the Bishop of London for promotion. He professed to have converted Psalmanazar, baptized him, with the Brigadier for godfather, got his discharge from the regiment, and launched him upon London under the patronage of Bishop Compton. Here Psalmanazar, who on his arrival was between nineteen and twenty years old, became famous in the religious world. He supported his fraud by invention of a language and letters, and of a Formosan religion. To oblige the Bishop he translated the church catechism into 'Formosan,' and he published in 1704 'an historical and geographical Description of Formosa,' of which a second edition appeared in the following year. It contained numerous plates of imaginary scenes and persons. His gross and puerile absurdities in print and conversation--such as his statements that the Formosans sacrificed eighteen thousand male infants every year, and that the Japanese studied Greek as a learned tongue,--excited a distrust that would have been fatal to the success of his fraud, even with the credulous, if he had