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Wace has preserved the fiction of Geoffrey, and has catered
to that characteristic of the English people which, not content with
homespun myths, sought for genealogies from the remote classic times.
Wace's _Brut_ is chiefly in octo-syllabic verse, and extends to fifteen
thousand lines.
But Wace was a courtier, as well as a poet. Not content with pleasing the
fancy of the English people with a fabulous royal lineage, he proceeded to
gratify the pride of their Norman masters by writing, in 1171, his "Roman
de Rou, et des Ducs de Normandie," an epic poem on Rollo, the first Duke
of Normandy--Rollo, called the Marcher, because he was so mighty of
stature that no horse could bear his weight. This Rollo compromised with
Charles the Simple of France by marrying his daughter, and accepting that
tract of Neustria to which he gave the name of Normandy. He was the
ancestor, at six removes, of William the Conqueror, and his mighty deeds
were a pleasant and popular subject for the poet of that day, when a
great-grandson of William, Henry II.


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