John Toland (1669-1722) was born near Redcastle, in Co.  Derry, and was at first a Catholic but subsequently became a free-thinker.  His Christianity not Mysterious (1696) marks an epoch in religious disputes, for it started the deistical controversy which was so distinctive a feature of the first half of the eighteenth century.  It shared a similar fate to that of the Case Stated, though on very different grounds, and was ordered by the Irish parliament to be burned by the hangman.  Toland wrote many other books, among which are Amyntor (1699); Nazarenus (1702); Pantheisticon; History of the Druids; and Hypatia.  All his books show versatility and wide reading and are characterized by a pointed, vigorous, and aggressive style.

George Farquhar (1678-1707), a Derry man, and Thomas Southerne (1660-1746), born near Dublin, were distinguished playwrights, who began their respective careers in the seventeenth century.  Farquhar left Trinity College, Dublin, as an undergraduate and became an actor, but owing to his accidental killing of another player he left the stage and secured a commission in the army.  He soon turned his attention to the writing of plays, and was responsible in all for eight comedies.  He has left us some characters that are very humorous and at the same time true to life, such as Scrub the servant in The Beaux’ Stratagem and Sergeant Kite in The Recruiting Officer.  His Boniface, the landlord in the former of these two plays, has become the type, as well as the ordinary quasi-facetious nickname, of an innkeeper.  He was advancing in his art, for his last comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707), is undoubtedly his best, and had he lived longer—­he died before he was thirty—­he might have bequeathed to posterity something even more noteworthy.  As Leigh Hunt says of him:  “He was becoming gayer and gayer, when death, in the shape of a sore anxiety, called him away as if from a pleasant party, and left the house ringing with his jest.”

Southerne was also a student of Trinity College, Dublin.  At the age of eighteen, however, he left his alma mater, and went to London to study law.  This profession he in turn abandoned for the drama.  His first play, The Persian Prince, or the Loyal Brother, had remarkable success when performed, and secured him an ensign’s commission in the army (1685).  Here promotion came to him rapidly and by 1688 he had risen to captain’s rank.  The Revolution of that year, however, cut off all further hope of advancement, and he once more turned his attention to the writing of plays.  His productions number ten.  His tragedies Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage (1694) and Oroonoko (1696), both founded on tales by Mrs. Aphra Behn, are powerful presentations of human suffering.  His comedies are amusing, but gross.  Southerne had business ability enough to make play-writing pay, and the amounts he received for his productions fairly staggered his friend Dryden.  It is to this faculty that Pope alludes when he says that Southerne was one whom