The History of Geoffrey was printed at Paris, in quarto, in 1508, and again in the same size, by Ascensius, in 1517. It was also printed with five other British historians, in folio, at Leyden, in 1587. Ponticus Virunnius, an Italian author, made an abridgment of it, in six books, which was printed at London, by Powel, in 1585, and also in the edition just mentioned. A translation of Geoffrey’s chronicle was made by Aaron Thompson, and published at London in 1718, to which was prefixed a long preface, relating to the authority of the history. Thompson’s vindication of his author is elaborately written, and he defends him with great skill and learning; but after refuting the charge of forgery, he has failed in his attempt to establish Geoffrey’s work as an historical performance, for he himself invalidates its authority, by acknowledging that it was only such an irregular account, as the Britons were able to preserve in those times of destruction and confusion, with the addition of some romantic tales, which indeed might be traditions among the Welsh, and such as Geoffrey might think entertaining stories for the credulity of the times. Thompson, in his preface, says that in making his translation, he used two editions of Geoffrey. The first was the Paris edition of Ascensius, 1517, which abounds with abbreviations of words, sometimes rendering their reading ambiguous. The other was the edition of Commeline, printed in the year 1587, which is much the most correct. These two were printed from different manuscripts, and there is a considerable variation between them, especially in the orthography of persons and places. This observation extends to the several ancient abridgments of Geoffrey, by Alfred of Beverley, Ralph Diceto, Matthew of Westminster, Ralph Higden, and Ponticus Virunnius. Footnote 44: Nennius lived in the ninth century, and is said to have left behind him several treatises, of which all that has been published is the history, which was printed for the first time in Dr. Gale’s Collection of British Historians, published at Oxford in 1687 and 1691, in 2 vols. folio. Leland mentions an ancient copy of Nennius’s history, which he says he borrowed from Thomas Solme, Secretary for the French language to king Henry the eighth, in the margin of which were the additions of _Sam. Beaulanius_, or _Britannus_. He has transcribed several of these marginal annotations, which as it appears, were afterwards inserted in the body of the history, and were printed in that manner by Dr. Gale. The Doctor in his notes, mentions Beaulanius as the Scholiast on the copy which he used, but Leland has a great many other things, as extracts out of Beaulanius, which Dr. Gale does not mention to be only in the Scholion. There is also in the Bodleian Library a manuscript of Nennius apparently nearly 600 years old, in which the prefaces and all the interpolations, which Leland says are by Beaulanius, are wanting.