One wonders, as he comes from toiling through the sweat and muck and irreverent satire of _The Tale of a Tub_, what could have possessed the man to write so piously. He was used to open his sermons with a little prayer that was devout enough and all-embracing enough for the prayer-book. Then there is a letter of his to a young clergyman, giving advice about the make-up of his sermons, which would serve for an excellent week-day discourse at Marquand Chapel. Indeed he has somewhat to say against the use of “hard words--called by the better sort of vulgar, fine language”--that is worth repeating: “I will appeal to any man of letters whether at least nineteen or twenty of these perplexing words might not be changed into easy ones, such as naturally first occur to ordinary men; … the fault is nine times in ten owing to affectation, and not want of understanding. When a man’s thoughts are clear, the properest words will generally offer themselves first, and his own judgment will direct him in what order to place them, so as they may be best understood. In short, that simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive to any great perfection, is nowhere more eminently useful than in this.” But let us not suppose from all this that Swift has settled down tamely, and month by month, into the jog-trot duties of a small Irish vicar; no, no! there is no quiet element in his nature. He has gone back and forth from Dublin to London--sometimes on a Berkeley errand--sometimes on his own. He has met Congreve, an old school-fellow, and Prior and Gay; he has found the way to Will’s Coffee-house and to Button’s;[112] has some day seen Dryden--just tottering to the grave; has certainly dined with Addison, and finished a bottle with Steele. They call him the mad parson at Button’s; they have seen _The Tale of a Tub_; his epigrams are floating from mouth to mouth; his irony cuts like a tiger’s claw; he feels the power of his genius tingling to his fingertips--_he_, a poor Irish parson! why, the whole atmosphere around him, whether at London or at Dublin, is charged and surcharged with Satan’s own lightning of worldly promises. And Hester Johnson, and Moor Park? Well, she has not forgotten him; ah! no; and he has by no means forgotten her. For she, with a good womanly friend, Mrs. Dingley, has gone to live in Ireland; Swift thinks they can live more economically there. These two ladies set up their homestead near to Swift’s vicarage; he goes to see them; they come to see him. He is thirty-three, and past; and she twenty, and described as beautiful. Is there any scandalous talking? Scarce one word, it would seem. He is as considerate as ice; and she as coy as summer clouds.