Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 12th century)
“If I had adorned my page with high-flown rhetorical figures, I should have bored my readers, for they would have been forced to spend more time in discovering the meaning of my words than in following the story.”
- Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain (Dedication), completed in 1136 CE, translated from Latin into English by Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Classics, 1966).
