No. 7. SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1758.
One of the principal amusements of the _Idler_ is to read the works of
those minute historians the writers of news, who, though contemptuously
overlooked by the composers of bulky volumes, are yet necessary in a
nation where much wealth produces much leisure, and one part of the
people has nothing to do but to observe the lives and fortunes of the
other.
To us, who are regaled every morning and evening with intelligence, and
are supplied from day to day with materials for conversation, it is
difficult to conceive how man can subsist without a newspaper, or to
what entertainment companies can assemble, in those wide regions of the
earth that have neither _Chronicles_ nor _Magazines_, neither _Gazettes_
nor _Advertisers_, neither _Journals_ nor _Evening Posts_.
There are never great numbers in any nation, whose reason or invention
can find employment for their tongues, who can raise a pleasing
discourse from their own stock of sentiments and images; and those few
who have qualified themselves by speculation for general disquisitions
are soon left without an audience.
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