tory,
Britain was originally called Brutain, after Brut or Brutus, the son
of Aeneas. Locrin was the eldest son of Brutus and his wife Innogen,
and defeated Humber, king of Hungary, in a great battle; after which
Humber was drowned in the river which still bears his name. Locrin's
daughter Averne (or Sabre in Geoffrey) was drowned likewise, in the
river which was consequently called Severn. The British king Bathulf
(or, in Geoffrey, Bladud) was the builder of Bath; and the son of
Bladud was Leir, who had three daughters, named Gornorille, Began, and
Cordeille. Kymbel (in Geoffrey, Kymbelinus), who had been brought up
by Augustus C{ae}sar, was king of Britain at the time of the birth of
Christ; his sons were Guider and Arvirag (Guiderius and Arviragus).
Another king of Britain was King Cole, who gave name (says Geoffrey
falsely) to Colchester. We come into touch with authentic history with
the reign of Vortigern, when Hengist and Horsa sailed over to Britain.
An extract from Robert of Gloucester is given in _Specimens of Early
English_, Part II.

The other great work of the same date is the vast collection edited
for the Early English Text Society by Dr Horstmann in 1887, entitled,
_The Early South-English Legendary_, or Lives of Saints. It is extant
in several MSS., of which the oldest (MS. Laud 108) originally
contained 67 Lives; with an Appendix, in a later hand, containing
two more. The eleventh Life is that of St Dunstan, which is printed
in _Specimens of Early English_, Part II, from another MS.

Soon after the year 1300 the use of the Southern dialect becomes
much less frequent, with the exception of such pieces as belong
particularly to the county of Kent and will be considered by
themselves. There are two immense manuscript collections of various
poems, originally in various dialects, which are worth notice.
One of these is the Harleian MS. No. 2253, in the British Museum, the
scribe of which has reduced everything into the South-Western dialect,
though it is plain that, in many cases, it is not the dialect in which
the pieces were originally composed; this famous manuscript belongs to
the beginning of the fourteenth century. Many poems were printed from
it, with the title of _Altenglische Dichtungen_, by Dr K. Boeddeker,
in 1878. Another similar collection is contained in the Vernon MS. at
Oxford, and belongs to the very end of the same century; the poems in
it are all in a Southern dialect, which is that of