Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,
    ’Mid snows of paper and fierce hail of pease;
    And proud his mistress’ orders to perform,
    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

A note to the early editions of “The Dunciad” explains that the old ways of making thunder and mustard were the same, but that of late the thunder had been advantageously simulated by means of “troughs of wood with stops in them.”  “Whether Mr. Dennis was the inventor of that improvement, I know not,” writes the annotator; “but it is certain that being once at a tragedy of a new author he fell into a great passion at hearing some, and cried:  ‘’Sdeath! that is my thunder.’” Dennis’s thunder was first heard on the production at Drury Lane Theatre, in 1709, of his “Appius and Virginia,” a hopelessly dull tragedy, which not even the united exertions of Booth, Wilkes, and Betterton could keep upon the stage for more than four nights.  “The Dunciad” was written in 1726, when Pope either did not really know that the old mustard-bowl style of storm was out of date, or purposely refrained from mentioning the recent invention of “troughs of wood with stops in them.”

In July, 1709, Drury-lane Theatre was closed by order of the Lord Chamberlain, whereon Addison published in “The Tatler” a facetious inventory of the goods and movables of Christopher Rich, the manager, to be disposed of in consequence of his “breaking up housekeeping.”  Among the effects for sale are mentioned: 

    A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.

    Another of a bigger sort, by Mr. D——­’s directions, little used.

The catalogue is not of course to be viewed seriously, or it might be inferred that Dennis’s new thunder was still something of the mustard-bowl sort.  Other items relative to the storms of the stage and their accessories are: 

     Spirits of right Nantz brandy for lambent flames and
     apparitions.

     Three bottles and a half of lightning.

     A sea consisting of a dozen large waves, the tenth bigger than
     ordinary, and a little damaged.

(According to poetic authority, it may be noted, the tenth wave is always the largest and most dangerous.)

     A dozen and a half of clouds trimmed with black, and well
     conditioned.

     A set of clouds after the French mode, streaked with lightning
     and furbelowed.

     One shower of snow in the whitest French paper.

     Two showers of a browner sort.

It is probably to this mention of snow-storms we owe the familiar theatrical story of the manager who, when white paper failed him, met the difficulty of the situation by snowing brown.