The popularity of Geoffrey’s _History_ was immediate and immense; it is indeed difficult to find a parallel to it before the age of printed books. So much is largely attested by the number of extant MS copies of the work.[83] But the most striking evidence of the impression it made is to be found in the number of translations, adaptations and continuations of the _Historia_ compiled from the moment of its first appearance down to comparatively recent times. Not long, if at all, after its author’s death, Geoffrey Gaimar translated it into Anglo-Norman verse.[84] By 1155 Wace had completed his _Brut_, which in substance is almost entirely based on Geoffrey’s _Historia_. Early in the next century Layamon wrote his English _Brut_, embodying, with many interesting additions and embellishments of his own, the main features of Geoffrey’s and Wace’s narrative. Then follow a long line of English chroniclers, in both prose and verse, from Robert of Gloucester down to Grafton and Holinshed, who pass on Geoffrey’s fables as authentic history. In the Elizabethan age, in spite of attempts made to discredit him by critics and antiquaries, like Polydore Vergil and Camden, Geoffrey continues to be drawn upon by the poets. Sackville and Spenser, Warner and Drayton, and others, give a new currency to his British legends, and Drayton even goes out of his way to defend his impugned reputation.[85] Spenser, in borrowing from his record of British kings, pays him a well-known tribute in the second book of _The Faerie Queene_. But, perhaps, the finest tribute of all to Geoffrey’s _History_ is that of Wordsworth in ‘Artegal and Elidure,’ where he sings of the “British record” in which “We read of Spenser’s fairy themes, And those that Milton loved in youthful years; The sage enchanter Merlin’s subtle schemes; The feats of Arthur and his knightly peers; Of Arthur, who, to upper light restored, With that terrific sword Which yet he brandishes for future war Shall lift his country’s fame above the polar star!”