io MS.; Ballads and Romances," ed. J. W. Hales and F.
J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1867, &c.

The publications of the Early English Text Society include, among
others, the romances of "Ferumbras," "Otuel," "Huon of Burdeux,"
"Charles the Grete," "Four Sons of Aymon," "Sir Bevis of Hanston," "King
Horn," with fragments of "Floriz and Blauncheflur," "Havelok the Dane,"
"Guy of Warwick," "William of Palerne," "Generides," "Morte Arthure,"
Lonelich's "History of the Holy Grail," "Joseph of Arimathie," "Sir
Gawaine and the Green Knight," &c. Others are in preparation.

[11] The adoption by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century, of
Brutus the Trojan as father of the British race, as Nennius had done two
centuries earlier, did much for the spreading of this belief; the
popularity and authority of Geoffrey's fabulous history was so great
that for several centuries the gravest English historians accepted his
statements concerning Brutus without hesitation. Matthew Paris, the most
accurate and trustworthy historian of the thirteenth century, gives an
account of his coming to the island of Albion, "that was then inhabited
by nobody but a few giants": "Erat tunc nomen insulae Albion, quae a
nemine, exceptis paucis gigantibus habitabatur." Brutus proceeds to the
banks of the Thames, and there founds his capital, which he calls the
New Troy, Trojam novam, "quae postea, per corruptionem vocabuli
Trinovantum dicta fuerit" ("Chronica Majora," Rolls Series, I. pp.
21-22). In the fourteenth century Ralph, in his famous "Polychronicon,"
gives exactly the same account of the deeds of the Trojan prince, and
they continued in the time of Shakespeare to be _history_. Here is the
learned account Holinshed gives of these events in his "Chronicles":

"Hitherto have we spoken of the inhabitants of this Ile
before the coming of Brute, although some will needs have it
that he was the first which inhabited the same with his
people descended of the Troians, some few giants onelie
excepted whom he utterlie destroied, and left not one of
them alive through the whole ile. But as we shall not doubt
of Brutes coming hither ..." &c.

"This Brutus or Brytus (for this letter Y hath of ancient
times had the sounds both of V and I) ... was the sonne of
Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Aeneas the
Trojan, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie,
before the citie wa