“It is my custom, in a dearth of news, to entertain myself with those collections of advertisements that appear at the end of our public prints. These I consider as accounts of news from the little world, in the same manner that the foregoing parts of the paper are from the great. If in one we hear that a sovereign prince is fled from his capital city, in the other we hear of a tradesman who has shut up his shop and run away. If in one we find the victory of a general, in the other we see the desertion of a private soldier. I must confess I have a certain weakness in my temper that is often very much affected by these little domestic occurrences, and have frequently been caught with tears in my eyes over a melancholy advertisement. “But to consider this subject in its most ridiculous lights, advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador. An advertisement from Piccadilly goes down to posterity with an article from Madrid, and John Bartlett[29] of Goodman’s Fields is celebrated in the same paper with the Emperor of Germany. Thus the fable tells us, that the wren mounted as high as the eagle, by getting upon his back. “A second use which this sort of writings have been turned to of late years has been the management of controversy, insomuch that above half the advertisements one meets with nowadays are purely polemical. The inventors of ‘Strops for Razors’ have written against one another this way for several years, and that with great bitterness;[30] as the whole argument _pro_ and _con_ in the case of the ‘Morning Gown’ is still carried on after the same manner. I need not mention the several proprietors of Dr Anderson’s pills; nor take notice of the many satirical works of this nature so frequently published by Dr Clark, who has had the confidence to advertise upon that learned knight, my very worthy friend, Sir William Read:[31] but I shall not interpose in their quarrel: Sir William can give him his own in advertisements, that, in the judgment of the impartial, are as well penned as the Doctor’s. “The third and last use of these writings is to inform the world where they may be furnished with almost every thing that is necessary for life. If a man has pains in his head, colics in his bowels, or spots in his clothes, he may here meet with proper cures and remedies. If a man would recover a wife or a horse that is stolen or strayed; if he wants new sermons, electuaries, asses’ milk, or anything else, either for his body or mind, this is the place to look for them in.