GELLIUS, AULUS. b. 117, d. 180. Latin grammarian and critic.
THE ATTIC NIGHTS. Tr. Rev. W. Beloe. 3 v. 1795.
GENERIDES. Cir. 1440. Ed. F. J. Furnival, Roxburghe Club, 1865.
Ed. A. Wright, E.E.T.S., lv., lxx. 1873.
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. b. 1100, d. 1154. British historian.
THE BRITISH HISTORY. Tr. With a large commentary by Aaron Thomson, 1718.
Historia Regum Brittaniæ, or Historia Britonum, based, as Geoffrey tells us, upon a very old book lent him by Archdeacon Walter (Galenius) of Oxford, probably a volume of Breton Legends. Geoffrey also drew from the older history of Nennius, but there still remains a large portion of his work which has not been traced beyond his own pen.
The 'Historia' is looked upon as an epoch-making book, owing to the impulse it gave to the literature of Romance. Legends afloat among the natives of Wales and Bretagne were now given a literary garb which rendered them sufficiently attractive to awaken the interest of the world in general, and the imagination of the mediæval poet was aroused by the chivalric glamour which the historian threw over his descriptions of Arthur's Court. It was a main source, but not the exclusive one of Arthurian legend, for independent of the fact that many characteristic features of the latter are not mentioned by him, there is evidence of Welsh fables being extant in the 12th century, which supplied material for later romances apart from Geoffrey's history.
This work is the fountain-head of medieval romance, the principal source of the legends of Merlin and Arthur, which were amplified by the romancers by material from Celtic tradition. Geoffrey's work is the basis of Wace's 'Roman de Brut' and of Layamon's 'Brut'.