GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, otherwise named ARTHUR, the well-known British historian, was torn in the town from which ho took hls name, and is supposed to have received his education at the Benedictine monastery in its vicinity. Tradition still points out a small apartment in the remains of that monastery which is designated as his study. He was made archdeacon of Monmoutb, and on the 21th of February 1152 consecrated bishop of St. Asaph. Robert, earl of Gloucester, natural sou of Henry I., and Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, were his chief patrons.
Walter Mapes, at that time archdeacon of Oxford, a diligent Inquirer for his day after the works of ancient authors, is said, whilst journey ing in Armorica, to have met with a history of Britain written in the British tongue, the translation of which, upon his return to England, he recommended to Geoffrey of Monmouth, who undertook the task and completed it with great fidelity. At first he divided it into four, but afterwards into eight books, to which he added the book of Merlin's Prophecies,' which he had also translated from British verse into Latin prose. Numerous fabulous and trifling stories are inserted in the history, to an extent which has induced some authors, and among them Buchanan, to consider the whole as fiction ; but others, among whom are Archbishop Usher, Leland, &c., consider that parts of his history are true, and that the work is not to be rejected in the gross. Welsh critics assert that Geoffrey's work was a vitiated transla tion of the llistory of the British Kings,' written by Tyssilio or St. Talian, bishop df St. Asaph, who lived in the 7th century, and
translated by the Rev. P. Roberts in 1811 ; but it is by no means certain that the Welsh History, of which the manuscripts are stated to be all comparatively modern, was not itself translated or compiled from Geoffrey's work. The best modern writers incline to the opinion that the book is in the main a fabrication, and the pretended history, from which Geoffrey states that he translated his work, a myth; the book being really a kind of romance, fouuded upon popular legends, to which he gave cohesion by borrowing largely from Cinders and other early writers.
Several editions of Geoffrey's history are extant in Latin : the earliest is is 4to, printed by Ascensius at Paris in 1508 ; reprinted in 4to, 1517. It was also printed by Commeline at Heidelberg, in folio, 1587, among the Rerum Britaunicarum Scriptores vetustiores et prascipui.' A translation of it into English, by Aaron Thompson, of Queen's College, Oxford, was published in London in 1718, in Svo, and reprinted by Dr. Giles in 1842, and again in Bohn's Antiquarian Library,' 1848.
Copies of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, in manuscript, are not unfrequent in our great libraries : several, of an ago very near his time, are preserved among the manuscripts of the old Royal Library in the British Museum; one formerly belonging to the library of Morgan Abbey is believed to be the best. Geoffrey of Monmouth died about the year 1154.