be remembered that our old histories, including Layamon’s poem of The Brut mentioned above, usually included the fabulous history of very early Britain as narrated by Geoffrey of Monmouth; and it is useful to remember that we owe to this circumstance such important works as Shakespeare’s King Lear and Cymbeline, as well as the old play of Locrine, once attributed to Shakespeare.  According to Robert’s version of Geoffrey’s story, 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 the scribe.  It contains, e.g., a copy of the earliest version of Piers the Plowman, which would have been far more valuable if the scribe had retained the spelling of his copy.  This may help us to realise one of the great difficulties which beset the study of dialects, namely, that we usually find copies of old poems reduced to the scribe’s own dialect; and it may easily happen that such a copy varies considerably from the correct form.