author is named in both these versions, and named differently.
In the elder he is Layamon the son of Leovenath, in the younger
Laweman the son of Leuca; and though Laweman is a mere variant or
translation of Layamon, as much can hardly be said of Leovenath and
Leuca. Further, the later version, besides the changes of language
which were in the circumstances inevitable, omits many passages,
besides those in which it is injured or mutilated, and alters proper
names entirely at discretion.

The only explanation of this, though it is an explanation which leaves
a good deal unexplained, is, of course, that the sense both of
historical criticism and of the duty of one writer to another was
hardly born. The curiosity of the Middle Ages was great; their
literary faculty, though somewhat incult and infantine, was great
likewise: and there were such enormous gaps in their positive
knowledge that the sharp sense of division between the certain, the
uncertain, and the demonstrably false, which has grown up later, could
hardly exist. It seems to have been every man's desire to leave each
tale a little richer, fuller, handsomer, than he found it: and in
doing this he hesitated neither at the accumulation of separate and
sometimes incongruous stories, nor at the insertion of bits and scraps
from various sources, nor, it would appear, at the addition of what
seemed to him possible or desirable, without troubling himself to
examine whether there was any ground for considering it actual.

[Sidenote: _The form of the_ Brut.]

Secondly, Layamon has no small interest of form. The language in which
the _Brut_ is written has an exceedingly small admixture of French
words; but it has made a step, and a long one, from Anglo-Saxon
towards English. The verse is still alliterative, still destitute of
any fixed number of syllables or syllabic equivalents. But the
alliteration is weak and sometimes not present at all, the lines are
of less extreme lawlessness in point of length than their older Saxon
representatives, and, above all, there is a creeping in of rhyme. It
is feeble, tentative, and obvious, confined to ostentatious pairs like
"brother" and "other," "might" and "right," "fare" and "care." But it
is a beginning: and we know that it will spread.

[Sidenote: _Its substance._]

In the last comparison, that of matter, Layamon will not come out ill
even if he be tried high. The most obvious trial is with the work of
Chrestien de Troyes, h