“Oftentimes in turning over in mine own mind the many themes that might be subject-matter of a book, my thoughts would fall upon the plan of writing a history of the Kings of Britain; and in my musings thereupon meseemed it a marvel that, beyond such mention as Gildas and Bede have made of them in their luminous tractate, nought could I find as concerning the kings that had dwelt in Britain before the Incarnation of Christ, _nor nought even as concerning Arthur_ and the many others that did succeed him after the Incarnation, albeit that their deeds be worthy of praise everlasting, and be as pleasantly _rehearsed from memory by word of mouth in the traditions of many peoples_ as though they had been written down. Now, whilst I was thus thinking upon such matters, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned not only in the art of eloquence, but in the histories of foreign lands, offered me a certain most ancient book in the British language that did set forth the doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo, _all told in stories of exceeding beauty_. At his request, therefore, albeit that never have I gathered gay flowers of speech in other men’s little gardens and am content with mine own rustic manner of speech and mine own writing-reeds, have I been at pains to translate this volume into the Latin tongue. For, had I besprinkled my page with high-flown phrases, I should only have engendered a weariness in my readers by compelling them to spend more time over the meaning of the words than upon understanding the drift of my story.” Then follows the dedication to Robert of Gloucester.[76] Having thus given us his authority, and having taken further shelter under the wing of Walter, Geoffrey settles down to his task with all the gravity of a pious monkish chronicler. As other chroniclers had done before him, he, in his early books at least, makes brief references--as, apparently, so many “guarantees of good faith”--to contemporaneous events in sacred and profane history. When, for example, Gwendolen is said to have handed over the sceptre to her son Maddan, we learn that “Samuel the prophet reigned in Judæa, and Homer was held to be a famous teller of histories and poet.” Carlisle, we are told, was founded at the time when “Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.” “The fortress of Mount Paladur, which is now called Shaftesbury,” was built by Hudibras, when “Haggai, Amos, Joel and Azarias did prophesy.” We get, in the account of the building of Shaftesbury, a characteristic example of Geoffrey’s way of getting level with the sceptical reader. “There, while the wall was a-building, an eagle spake, the sayings whereof, had I believed them to be true, I would not have shrunk from committing to memory along with the rest.”