The chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, has occasioned a long controversy, and divided the learned world as much as any other work given to the public. By some it has been treated as a forgery imposed upon the world by Geoffrey himself, whilst by others the ground work is considered as true, although the history, like most monkish writings, is mixed with childish fables and legendary tales.
The controversy has now been some time finally decided, and the best Welsh critics allow that Geoffrey’s work was a vitiated translation of the history of the British kings, written by Tyssilio, or St. Telian, bishop of St. Asaph, who flourished in the seventh century. Geoffrey in his work omitted many parts, made considerable alterations, additions, and interpolations, latinised many of the British appellations, and in the opinion of a learned Welshman,[[45]] (Lewis Morris) metaphorically murdered Tyssillio. We may therefore conclude that Geoffrey ought not to be cited as historical authority any more than Amadis de Gaul, or the Seven Champions of Christendom.
Geoffrey’s historical Romance, however, has not only been versified by monkish writers, but has supplied some of our best poets with materials for their sublime compositions. Spenser in the second book of his “Fairie Queene” has given
“A Chronicle of Briton kings
”From Brute to Arthur’s rayne;“
in which he has adorned the genealogy with poetical images, and introduces it with a sublime address to queen Elizabeth, who was proud of tracing her descent from the British line.
In this historical romance is also to be found, the affecting history of Leir, king of Britain, the eleventh in succession after Brutus, who divided his kingdom between Goneriller and Regan, his two elder daughters, and disinherited his younger daughter, Cordeilla. Being ungratefully treated by his elder daughters, he was restored to the crown by Cordeilla, who espoused Aganippus, king of the Franks. From this account Shakespeare selected his incomparable tragedy of king Lear; but improved the pathos by making the death of Cordeilla, which name he softened after the example of Spenser into Cordelia, precede that of Lear, whilst in the original story, the aged father is restored to his kingdom, and survived by Cordeilla.
Milton seems to have been particularly fond of Geoffrey’s tales,[[46]] to which he was indebted for the beautiful fiction of Sabrina in the mask of Comus. In his youth he even formed the design of making the early period of the British history, from Brutus to Arthur, the subject of an Epic Poem. The poetical language of Milton was peculiarly suited to this species of romance; he would have exalted the legends of Geoffrey, and enriched with the finest imagery the incantations and prophecies of Merlin, the heroic deeds of Vortimer, Aurelius, and Uther Pendragon.
The fables of Geoffrey have been clothed in rhyme by Robert of Gloucester, a monk of the abbey of Gloucester. He has left a poem of considerable length, which is a history of England in verse, from Brutus to the reign of Edward the first. His rhyming chronicle is, however, destitute either of art or imagination, and Geoffrey’s prose, frequently has a more poetical air than this author’s verses. It was evidently written after the year 1278, as the poet mentions king Arthur’s sumptuous tomb, erected in that year, before the high altar of Glastonbury abbey, and he declares himself a living witness of the remarkably dismal weather which distinguished the day on which the battle of Evesham was fought in the year 1265. From these and other circumstances this piece appears to have been composed about the year 1280. It is full of Saxonisms, which indeed abound more or less, in every writer before Gower and Chaucer.
Geoffrey was also copied by an old French poet, called Maister Wace, or Gasse, from which Robert de Brunne in his metrical chronicle of England translated that part which extends from Æneas to the death of Cadwallader. Wace’s poem is commonly called Roman de Rois d’Angleterre, and is esteemed one of the oldest of the French Romances.