A well-known essay of a modern poet beautifully uses this piece of the
modern machinery of his craft. Dryden here makes distance mellow the
thunder of a naval fight into a musical undertone. The great sea-fight
between the duke of York and the Dutch, fought within hearing of
London, left "the town almost empty" of its anxious citizens, whose
"dreadful suspense would not allow them to rest at home," but drew
them into the eastern fields and suburbs, "all seeking the noise
in the depth of silence." Dryden and three friends took a barge and
descended the river. Once clear of the crowded port above Greenwich,
"they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently; and
then, every one favoring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it
was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like the
noise of distant thunder or of swallows in a chimney; those little
undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached
them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror which
they had between the fleets. After they had attentively listened till
such time as the sound by little and little went from them, Eugenius,
lifting up his head and taking notice of it, was the first who
congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory."

This, the eloquent eolian music of distant and unseen battle, was
unheard by the ancient cities and their chroniclers and poets. It will
grow again less familiar as rifled ordnance is introduced, with its
thinner and sharper style of expression. Waterloo appears to have been
heard farther than Sedan or Metz, although its pieces were but popguns
compared with those that spoke the requiem of the Third Napoleon.
And perhaps, if we allow for smallness in number and calibre, those
employed by Robert the Bruce at the battle of Werewater in 1327--said
to be the first recorded occasion in Europe--were more vociferous than