islands, even where no division of blood or
creed existed, grew thus to be strained and embittered to the last
degree; the sense of hostility and indignation being hardly less strong
in the latest arrived colonist than in the longest established. "There
was scarce an Englishman," says a writer of the time, "who had been
seven years in the country, _and meant to remain there_, who did not
become averse to England, and grow into something of an Irishman." All
this must be taken into account before those puzzling contradictions and
anomalies which make up the history of this century can ever be
properly realized.

XLVII.

MOLYNEUX AND SWIFT.

The early half of the eighteenth century is such a very dreary period of
Irish history that there is little temptation to linger over it. Two
men, however, stand out conspicuously against this melancholy
background, neither of whom must be passed over without a few words.

The first of these was William Molyneux, the "Ingenious Molyneux," as he
was called by his contemporaries, a distinguished philosopher, whose
life was almost exclusively devoted to scientific pursuits. Molyneux is,
or ought to be, a very interesting figure to any one who cares, even
slightly, about Ireland. He was one of the chief founders of the
Philosophical Association in Dublin, which was the parent both of the
present Dublin Society and of the Royal Irish Academy. He was also a
Fellow of the Royal Society, and a friend of John Locke, with whom he
constantly corresponded. Both his letters, and those of his brother, Dr.
Thomas Molyneux, show the most vivid and constant interest in everything
connected with the natural history of Ireland. Now it is a moving bog,
which has scared the natives in its neighbourhood out of their senses;
now, again, some great find of Irish elks, or some tooth of a mammoth
which has been unearthed, and it is gravely discussed how such a
"large-bodied beast" could have been transported over seas, especially
to a country where the "Greeks and Romans never had a footing," and
where therefore the learned Mr. Camden's theory, that the elephants'
bones found in England were the remains of those "brought over by the
Emperor Claudius," necessarily falls to the ground. Both the brothers
Molyneux belong to a band of Irish naturalists whose numbers are,
unfortunately, remarkably limited. Why it should be so is not easily
explained, but so it is. When Irish archaeology is mentioned, the na