Triumphant Tories And Desponding Whigs

One of the best lines in Swift’s “A Description of a City Shower,” is “Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs//Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs (39-42). For one thing, the mere image of normally polished and powdered politicians feverishly running for shelter to protect their wigs is amusing in itself. On a deeper level, for the politicians to react to the rain just as any other townsperson brings them down a peg and levels them with the commoners such as “the drunkard” or the “seamstress.” For Swift, even the lofty politicians need a “cleansing” just like every other person (or perhaps even more so in their case). At the same time, the fact they so quickly “forget” their long-lasting feuds for the sake of something as trivial