We really find some difficulty in believing that it is not Swift's _Essay on the Antiquity of the English Language_ that we have before us. "My present attempt is to assert the antiquity of our English tongue, which, as I shall undertake to prove by invincible arguments, hath varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty-four years past. And my proof shall be drawn from etymology, wherein I shall use my matter much better than Skinner, Verstegan, Cambden, and many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force upon the words, nor desire any more favour than to allow for the usual accidents of composition, or the avoiding a _cacophonia_. "I will begin with the Grecians, among whom the most ancient are the Greek leaders on both sides at the siege of Troy. For it is plain, from Homer, that the Trojans spoke Greek, as well as the Grecians. Of these latter _Achilles_ was the most valiant. This hero was of a restless, unquiet nature, and therefore, as Guy of Warwick was called a _Kill-care_, and another terrible man a _Kill-Devil_, so this general was called a _Kill-Ease_, or destroyer of ease, and at length by corruption _Achilles_. "Hector, on the other side, was the bravest among the Trojans. He had destroyed so many of the Greeks by _hacking_ and _tearing_ them, that his soldiers, when they saw him fighting, would cry out, 'Now the enemy will be _hackt_--now he will be _tore_.' At last, by putting both words together, the appellation was given to their leader under the name of _Hack-tore_, and, for the more commodious sounding, _Hector_. "The next I shall mention is _Andromache_, the famous wife of Hector. Her father was a Scottish gentleman of a noble family still subsisting in that ancient kingdom; but being a foreigner in Troy, to which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam, as _Dictys Cretensis_ learnedly observes, Hector fell in love with his daughter, and the father's name was _Andrew Mackay_. The young lady was called by the same name, only a little softened to the Greek accent." And now, and as no Irish antiquary can be well supposed to write a complete book without giving his own theory of the round towers of that country, we come to the chapter on these singular structures, in which, of course, all former enquirers are proved to have been egregiously wrong, and a new theory established on incontrovertible evidence; viz. that the round towers were monuments erected over different incarnations of the god Buddho. As usual, there is the alleged mistake of sound for sense to account for the reason why their common appellation of _clogteach_, or "bell house," should not truly express their use.