Powell was showing his fire-eating stunts in London, and the correspondent naïvely added:
Whether Mr. Powell will take it kindly of me thus to have published his secret I cannot tell; but as he now begins to drop into years, has no children that I know of and may die suddenly, or without making a will, I think it a great pity so genteel an occupation should become one of the artes perditae, as possibly it may, if proper care is not taken, and therefore hope, after this information, some true-hearted Englishman will take it up again, for the honor of his country, when he reads in the newspapers, "Yesterday, died, much lamented, the famous Mr. Powell. He was the best, if not the only, fire-eater in the world, and it is greatly to be feared that his art is dead with him."
After a couple of columns more in a similar strain, the correspondent signs himself Philopyraphagus Ashburniensis.
In his History of Inventions, Vol. III, page 272, 1817 edition, Beckmann thus describes the process:
