The Poems of Jonathan Swift

-A Description of a City Shower

[1] WRITTEN IN OCT., 1710

FIRST PRINTED IN THE TATLER, NO. 238

[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 thus, but altered when Pope published the "Miscellanies":

"His only coat, where dust confused with rain,

Roughens the nap, and leaves a mingled stain."--Scott.]

[Footnote 5: Alluding to the change of ministry at that time.]

[Footnote 6: Virg., "Aeneid," lib. ii.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 7: Fleet Ditch, in which Pope laid the famous diving scene in "The Dunciad"; celebrated also by Gay in his "Trivia." There is a view of Fleet Ditch as an illustration to "The Dunciad" in Warburton's edition of Pope, 8vo, 1751.--W. E. B.]