Yet Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Monmouth, and afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph (1100-1154), in giving shape and substance to the Arthurian legends and traditions, had no better material to work with than that supplied by the British folk-songs, the tainted records of Gildas and Nennius, and the so-called Armoric collections of Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, who flourished in the eleventh century, and connected the Arthur of Brittany with the Arthur of Siluria. Geoffrey’s famous _Chronicon sive Historia Britonum_, dedicated to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and given to the world in the Latin tongue in the year 1115, was professedly a translation of the _Brut y Brenhined_, a “history of the Kings of Britain, found in Brittany,” best described in Wordsworth’s phrase: “A British record long concealed in old Armorica, whose secret springs no Gothic conqueror e’er drank.” In reality his imagination had been fired by the bardic celebrations of Arthur’s triumphs, the songs still sung vauntingly by an unconquered race. The old monkish chronicler manifested a marvellous ingenuity in imparting circumstantiality of the most convincing character to his narrative. He connected place-names of great repute with eponymous heroes; he linked the truths of the Roman occupation with the half-truths or fables of the British resistance; he wove some of the most striking Scriptural facts into the fabric of the romance; he so leavened falsehood with reality that the imposture was hard to detect, especially in an uncritical age, and the effect was most impressive upon the minds of an unreasoning generation. His inventions did not extend to incidents; these he took from the chronicles to hand, and he can only be charged with a free amplification of the records, and a readjustment of the events which had been described. Notwithstanding all the craft and devices of the chronicler, however, his history was almost immediately challenged, William of Newburgh, a Yorkshire monk, declaring that Geoffrey had “lied saucily and shamelessly,” with many other hard terms. He charged the supposed chronicler with making use of, and wholly depending upon, the old Breton tales, and with adding to these contestable compilations “increase of his own.” Nor was William of Newburgh alone in his protests and denunciation. Giraldus Cambriensis, by a parable, implied that Geoffrey’s work was a deceit. There was a man at Caerleon, he said, who could always tell a liar because he saw the devil and his imps leaping upon the man’s tongue. The Gospel of St. John was given him; he placed it in his bosom; and the evil spirits vanished. Then the _History of the Britons_, by “Geoffrey Arthur” (“Arthur” was a by-name of Geoffrey’s), was handed to him, and the imps immediately reappeared in greater numbers, and remained a longer time than usual on his body and on his book. _Cœdit quæstio_. But all this did not prevent Geoffrey’s masterpiece in nine