CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Church and Fortress of Dow,. Castle. By the Ref. John Puckle. (John Henry and James Parker.)--The position of Dover has probably made its castle known to a larger number of Englishmen than any similar building in this country, and an account of it by a competent hand has therefore more interest attached to it than is usual in the ease of an antiquarian monograph. This account of Dover Castle is by a very competent hand. Every visitor to the old fortress must have boon struck by the remains of the Pharos and the church immediately east of it. The least instructed eye detects in the masonry the marks of remote antiquity, and their position between the keep and the cliff proves them to occupy the part of the castle site which must have been earliest occupied. Some few years back the late Lord Herbert induced Parliament to undertake the duty of restoring the church. The work was carried out under the direction of Mr: Scott, and during its pro- gress an opportunity was afforded for a careful examination of the structure. Of this Mr. Puckle availed himself, and the results of his labour form the most interesting portion of the present work. What- ever the church may have suffered from time, it seems to have been still used for divine service till within the last one hundred and sixty or seventy years, and yet, incredible as it may seem, the earth had accumulated, both within and without, to a depth of no loss than nine feet. When this had been cleared away there was no difficulty in determining the basement of the Pharos to be Roman,
—the church was more ambiguous. There could be nil doubt that it was earlier than the Norman era, -and it was also evident that the workmanship and design were infinitely superior to anything in any known Anglo-Saxon building. On the other hand, there was a manifest difference between the Roman work of the Pharos and the masonry of the church. It is at this point that Mr. Puckle commences his really masterly argument. It is stated with a clearness and logical force, and yet at the same time with an equal freedom from either dry precision
or the introduction of irrelevant matter, which is deserving of the highest admiration. It is impossible to do justice to the reasoning and condense it ; we can but indicate the line of argument. The boldness of the arches and symmetry of the design point to a Roman origin. On the other hand, there is not a tree right angle in the building, nor any wall quite parallel to any other. The mortar is more like the Roman mortar than the Anglo-Saxon, and the tile bricks though inferior in substance and make are an obvious copy of the Roman. The blocks of stone are far larger than those of Anglo-Saxon masonry, and are of a peculiar oolite not found at present in Kent, and existing nowhere except in Roman work and this church. In short the church both in design and masonry is cer- tainlynot Roman, bui is strikingly Roman-like. The conclusion drawn with almost irresistible cogency from these facts is that the Church must be attributed to the close of the fourth century after the Diocletian perse- cation,—a period when the Romans were abandoning Britain, and when nevertheless Roman arts still lingered among the British Christians. Of the later portions of the work the use of Caen stone points probably to the Anglo-Saxon period, while the groining of the roof and most of the windows were almost certainly Norman. Having thus indicated the general course of Mr. Puckle's argument, we beg once again to say that the execution of the book is most scholar-like, and the illustrations prove the author to be a draughtsman of no mean pretensions. The Norman castle has been abundantly treated of before by competent antiquaries, and this part of the subject is therefore dis- cussed cursorily, but we think no point of interest is omitted. Certainly the result is a pleasant narrative. In conclusion we recognize in this book a real work of art. The subject is indeed no very great matter, but there is no attempt to make it look one whit more important than it really is. It is fully treated without discursiveness, and concisely treated without meagreness. The writer knew precisely what he wanted to do and has done exactly that, no more no less.
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