Brut
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Brut. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a poetical version of the legendary history of Great Britain by Layamon. This work is, in reality, a translation and enlargement of Wace's Norman French poem, Brut. Layamon's poem contains 32,000 lines. It was written about 1200, and gives in alliterative verse the history of Britain from the fall of Troy to the year 689. Brut, or Brutus, was supposed to have been the grandson of Ascanius. The story runs that he landed at Totniss in Devonshire, slew the Albion giants, and reigned as king in the island. At his death the kingdom was divided among his three sons. In the opening lines Layamon gives a brief account of himself and his purpose: An preost wes on leoden, Layamon wes ihoten. He was Leouenathe's sone: Lithe him beo drihte! He wonede at Ernleye, At aethelen are chirechen, Uppon Seuarne stathe: Sel thar him thuhte, On fest Radestone, Ther he bock radde. Hit com him on mode And on his mern thonke, etc. Of the above original we give the following free translation: A priest was in the land, Layamon was he hight. He was Leovenath's son: Gracious to him be the Lord! He dwelt at Earnley, Where are noble churches, On the Severn's bank: Well there he thought, Not far from Radestone, Where he read books. It came in mind to him, And in his chief thought, That he would of the English The noble deeds tell: What they were called, And whence they came, Who the English land First possessed. The first Englishman who attempts it (turning the Norman French chronicles into English), is Layamon, a monk of Ernely, still fettered in the old idiom, who sometimes happens to rhyme, sometimes fails, altogether barbarous and childish, unable to develop a continuous idea, babbling in little confused and incomplete phrases, after the fashion of the ancient Saxons.--Taine.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or BRUTUS, the eponymous Trojan hero who gave his name to the isla island of Britain, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon, and all the earlier historians in verse or prose. The great-grandson of Æneas, he was banished from Italy, and after many adventures, found his way to Albion, then the abode of giants, who were not destroyed without desperate fighting.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The factual outline in Aiton's 1910 entry still stands: Layamon, a priest on the Severn, turned Wace's Norman French Brut into English around 1200, and his poem survives in two manuscripts. What has not survived is Taine's verdict, quoted approvingly there, that Layamon was "altogether barbarous and childish" and "unable to develop a continuous idea"; twentieth-century scholarship reversed that judgement completely, and the Brut is now read as a powerful and deliberate poem, with modern verse translations such as Rosamund Allen's making it available to general readers. Editors now usually count the poem at roughly 16,000 long lines rather than the 32,000 of Aiton's reckoning, which splits each line in two. The Brutus story itself was already understood as legend in 1910 and remains so: no one has ever treated the Trojan settlement of Albion as history since.
Written for this edition, 2026.