On Mr Fanning the Engastrometh (1650)

 
Compiled by Steven Connor as part of The Dumbstruck Archive , a continuing, online supplement to Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Fanning was a ventriloquist at the court of Charles II, who acquired the nickname of 'the King's Whisperer'. 
 
To speak within, and to ones selfe, and yet
Bee heard, is much, yet Fanning doth it:
So tall and stout a man, ‘tis strange to see ‘t
So like a coward should his words down eat:
The belly hath no ears, they say, yet his
Hath ears to hear, and tongue to talk, I wis.

Robert Heath, Clarastella: Together With Poems Occasional, Elegies, Epigrams, Satyrs (London: for Humph. Moseley, 1650), Epigrams (separately paginated),  p. 37