clerk of the Leathersellers Company, who was eminent for curiosity
and literature, a collection of examples selected from Tillotson's
works, as Locker said, by Addison. It came too late to be of use,
so I inspected it but slightly, and remember it indistinctly. I
thought the passages too short. Addison, however, did not conclude
his life in peaceful studies, but relapsed, when he was near his
end, to a political dispute.

It so happened that (1718-19) a controversy was agitated with great
vehemence between those friends of long continuance, Addison and
Steele. It may be asked, in the language of Homer, what power or
what cause should set them at variance. The subject of their
dispute was of great importance. The Earl of Sunderland proposed an
Act, called the "Peerage Bill;" by which the number of Peers should
be fixed, and the King restrained from any new creation of nobility,
unless when an old family should be extinct. To this the Lords
would naturally agree; and the King, who was yet little acquainted
with his own prerogative, and, as is now well known, almost
indifferent to the possessions of the Crown, had been persuaded to
consent. The only difficulty was found among the Commons, who were
not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion of themselves and
their posterity. The Bill, therefore, was eagerly opposed, and,
among others, by Sir Robert Walpole, whose speech was published.

The Lords might think their dignity diminished by improper
advancements, and particularly by the introduction of twelve new
Peers at once, to produce a majority of Tories in the last reign:
an act of authority violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no
means to be compared with that contempt of national right with which
some time afterwards, by the instigation of Whiggism, the Commons,