end to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,[5]
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits,
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through,)
Laocoon[6] struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprison'd hero quaked for fear.
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odour, seem to tell
What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives with rapid force,
From Smithfield to St. Pulchre's shape their course,
And in huge confluence join'd at Snowhill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn bridge.[7]
Sweeping from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.

[Footnote 1: Swift was very proud of the "Shower," and so refers to it in
the Journal to Stella. See "Prose Works," vol. ii, p. 33: "They say 'tis
the best thing I ever writ, and I think so too. I suppose the Bishop of
Clogher will show it you. Pray tell me how you like it." Again, p. 41:
"there never was such a Shower since Danaee's," etc.--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 2: "Aches" is two syllables, but modern printers, who had lost
the right pronunciation, have _aches_ as one syllable; and then to
complete the metre have foisted in "aches _will_ throb." Thus, what the
poet and the linguist wish to preserve, is altered and finally lost. See
Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i, title "Errata," p. 81,
edit. 1858. A good example occurs in "Hudibras," Part III, canto 2, line
407, where persons are mentioned who
"Can by their Pangs and _Aches_ find
All turns and changes of the wind."--_W. E. B._]

[Footnote 3: "'Twas doubtful which was sea and which was sky." GARTH'S
_Dispensary_.]

[Footnote 4: Originally t