The powder blows up all before the fire.
St. 245. [p. 147.]
"So many houses were now burning together, that water could not be had in sufficient quantities where it was wanted. The only remedy left was, to blow up houses at convenient distances from those which were on fire, and to make, by that means, void spaces, at which the fury of the conflagration should spend itself for want of fuel. But this means also proved ineffectual; for the fire, in some places, made its way by means of the combustible part of the rubbish of the ruined houses, not well cleared, and in others, by flakes of burning matter of different kinds, which were carried through the air, by the impetuous wind, to great distances. And the city being at that time almost all built of very old timber, which had besides been parched and scorched by the sun the whole preceding summer, one of the hottest and dryest that had been ever known, it came to pass that, wherever such fiery matter chanced to light, it seldom wanted fit fuel to work and feed upon."—Baker's Chronicle, p. 642. Edit. 1730.
The days were all in this lost labour spent;
And, when the weary king gave place to night,
His beams he to his royal brother lent,
And so shone still in his reflective light.