Volume 9 — NOTES ON THE PRECEDING POEM.
Reading edition
So Moses was upheld while Israel fought.
"And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
"But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
"And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." Exodus, chap. xvii. 11, 12, 13th verses.
While, from afar, we heard the cannon play, Like distant thunder on a shiny day.
The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which, though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets." And, by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness, that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the combat.