His first work, which appeared about 1138, is entitled _Le Brut d'Angleterre_--The English Brutus--and is in part a paraphrase of the Latin history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who had presented Brutus of Troy as the first in the line of British kings.

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., was upon the throne of England.