46 



Stonehenge and Us Barrows. 



business to enter into any critical discussions on this subject, though 

 I cannot but lament that so little is known of the authors of such a 

 monument. Some, however, think these stones not natural and 

 hewn from a quarry, but made of fine sand and some imctuous 

 cement, like those trophies I have seen in Yorkshire. 



" Stonehenge has exercised the conjectures of no less than eight 

 writers since Camden, who, if we except Henry of Huntingdon, 

 first noticed it. There is indeed a rude draught of it in a MS, of 

 the ' Scala Mundi,' written about 1340, and continued to 1450, in 

 Benet College Library, which for the singularity is here copied.* 



" It is not mentioned in the Itinerary of Leland, who travelling 

 among towns and along rivers, did not go out of his way to examine 

 monstrous stones and barrows on wild and widespread downs, 

 though in his note on the extract about it from Geoffrey of Mon- 

 mouth (Coll. 2., 31,) he confutes the idle story of Merlin. Mr. 

 Camden could see nothing but confusion and rudeness in this 

 stately pile; and it must be confessed the print he has given of it 

 in his folio edition (to which we have substituted one dated 1575, 

 signed R. F.) does not help to make it distinct.^ Camden^s print 

 was copied and modernized by J. Kip, for Bishop Gibson. Inigo 

 Jones, full of ideas of architecture, conceited it to be a Tuscan 

 temple of Caelum or Terminus, built by the Romans (Stonehenge 



^ Re-engraved for the writer by Mr. Bidgood, of Taunton. 



