time when there was no rural police, and there were no officers trained in a detective service. Exaggeration and embellishment undoubtedly there is, for it is in song that he has come down to us; and it is the business of the poet to please as well as to instruct. Homer exaggerates and amplifies; but this does not at all affect the question whether there is not a substantial basis of fact in the subject of his poem; and whether the men of whom such extraordinary deeds are related, were not really actually existent persons. And this may serve to explain what I mean to prove; not that this or that particular story can be shown to have been an event of past times, but only that the whole system of the Robin Hood cycle rests upon a basis of fact and reality, some part of it capable of being brought into light as proved facts, and other parts as being placed among those occurrences which are invested with more or less probability when looked at through the mists which necessarily render obscure the minor transactions of periods so remote, and compel us to be content with having approximated to the true knowledge of them. And this conducts us at once to

a question which lies at the basis of this inquiry: namely, what are the means we possess of gaining information concerning him, admitting that he is a real personage of some at present unascertained period, or rather, where lie the evidences of his manner of life, which can be regarded as worthy of any degree of confidence?

And here it must be at once stated, that he is not found in authentic contemporary chronicles: that we

have no contemporary prose history, nor has his existence hitherto been ever made credible by the production of his name from any writing of his own time. He lives only as a hero of song; and when we find him mentioned in prose writings of a later date, it is manifest that the information was derived from the ballads, and is not independent of them, or correlative with them. And if his name may possibly be traced in contemporary writing, still it is to the songs that we must go to find out what manner of man he was, and the exploits performed by him. It is to the cycle of ballads, therefore, that we must first address ourselves, if we would know anything respecting him. It is the character, person, there delineated, that we are to inquire about. But then the songs themselves are of different age and different authority. Some have come down to us from near the times when the hero lived. Others are of more recent date-some of them quite modern-that is, not more than two or three centuries old. But these may still be founded on earlier compositions of the same kind, and thus be as much deserving of our regard as other songs, the high antiquity of which admits of no dispute. However, this happens to be a difficulty really of no great moment; because, from ballads of known antiquity, the manner of life and some of the characteristic exploits of the hero may be collected; and it has manifestly been an object of later song-writers, to make their compositions conform to the type of the hero, as exhibited in the ballads undoubtedly ancient. It will be well, however, for

the purpose of this inquiry, to distinguish the songs, the high antiquity of which may be proved from those which are more recent. The proof of antiquity in the really ancient lies in the style of the language, in their having proceeded from the early press in this country, or in their being found in manuscripts which are obviously, from the handwriting, of high antiquity.

Three single ballads are found in manuscript which cannot be later than the fourteenth century. I do not go into the proof of this, because they will not be critically examined in this Tract, but refer to the proof adduced by Mr. Wright and Mr. Gutch, in their writings on this subject. The three are: The Tale of Robin Hood and the Monk-Robin Hood and the Potter-Robin and Gandeleyn. Far above these in importance is the Poem, for it can hardly be called a Ballad, which was printed by Winkyn de Worde, in or about 1495; it is entitled The Lytel Geste of Robyn Hood; and is a kind of life of him, or rather a small collection of the ballads strung together, so as to give a continuity to the story, and with a few stanzas here and there, which appear to be the work of the person who, in this manner, dealt with such of the ballads as were known to him. A copy of this Poem, as it came from the press, can now be produced, and this alone places us as it were far in the backward of time, and we rest upon it as if we lived three hundred and fifty years ago; that is, no question can now be raised, whether what we receive now was not received by our ancestors living at the time of the battle of Bosworth, and when the Houses of York and Lancaster were

united. What we receive now, be it worthy of reception or not, was received then. But this printed Tract carries us still farther back, for the language of the ballads incorporated in it is of an earlier period than the reign of Henry the Seventh; the same indeed with those of the three ballads just named, that is, of the preceding century: so that we are in fact placed, by actually existing remains, within no great distance of the time when the outlaw and his companions lived. This Poem I take as the authentic and sufficient evidence of his life and deeds as a ballad hero.

To fix precisely the period when songs such as these were written, is beyond our power; but we cannot err in assigning them to as early a period as the reign of King Edward the Third; when we recollect that we have the testimony of a writer of that age to the existence and popularity of songs, of which the exploits of this outlaw were the themes. The passage has been often quoted, but it is impossible to pass over so important a piece of evidence; it occurs in Longland's Poem, entitled The Vision of Pierce Ploughman. A character, representing Sloth, is made to say:

"I kan not perfitly my paternoster as the prest it sayeth,

But I kan rymes of Robyn Hode and Randolf Earl of Chester." The date of this Poem is between 1355 and 1365; it is a testimony of the highest importance; it proves beyond all controversy the popularity of the ballads among the common people in the reign of King Edward the Third, and it seems also to prove, that in that reign, the outlaw was regarded as an actual person who had had a veritable existence, just as

Randolph Earl of Chester was a real person, and if the third Randolph, one who lived not long before the outlaw.

This is by far the earliest mention of his name in what may be called our literature, for I lay no stress upon the passage so often quoted from the Scoti-Chronicon, because I agree with Mr. Wright, an excellent judge in such matters, in regarding it as part of the addition which was made to the genuine Fordun in the fifteenth century. Wyntoun, Major, Boece, Scottish writers, who recognise the existence of this outlaw, are of too late date for their testimony to be of any weight.

It is reported of Selden, that he said there is more historic truth in many of our old ballads than there is in some works called histories, which, however, may be but a judgment on some of the libellous writers of his own age. Hearne had great historic faith in "the songs transmitted by the popular tongue." And, apart from authority, there can be no doubt that many of them are worthy of acceptation as evidence of facts. Hereward, a Saxon, we have reason to believe, had his deeds thus celebrated; and it is most certain that to the Earl of Chester, Simon de Montfort may be added as the subject of one of these ancient ballads, the ballad, one of indisputable antiquity, being still in existence. At a little later period the exploits of

a The French Song, or Lament, on the death of Simon Montfort, so beautifully translated by Mr. George Ellis, is well known: but there may have been other songs of which he was the subject; for it can hardly be supposed that King Edward the Second would have