Adding the Robin Hood of the 17th Ed. II. we have six persons of that name mentioned within a period of less than forty years, and this circumstance does not dispose us to receive with great favor any argument that may be founded upon one individual case of its occurrence.  But there is no end to the absurdities which flow from this supposition.  We are to believe that the weak and timid prince, that had severely punished his kinsman and his nobles, freely pardoned a yeoman, who, after serving with the rebels, had for twenty months made free with the king’s deer and robbed on the highway,—­and not only pardoned him, but received him into service near his person.  We are further to believe that the man who had led so daring and jovial a life, and had so generously dispensed the pillage of opulent monks, willingly entered into this service, doffed his Lincoln green for the Plantagenet plush, and consented to be enrolled among royal flunkies for three pence a day.  And again, admitting all this, we are finally obliged by Mr. Hunter’s document to concede that the stalworth archer (who, according to the ballad, maintained himself two-and-twenty years in the wood) was worn out by his duties as “proud porter” in less than two years, and was discharged a superannuated lackey, with five shillings in his pocket, "poar cas qil ne poait pluis travailler"!

To those who are well acquainted with ancient popular poetry the adventure of King Edward and Robin Hood will seem the least eligible portion of this circle of story for the foundation of an historical theory.  The ballad of King Edward and Robin Hood is but one version of an extremely multiform legend, of which the tales of “King Edward and the Shepherd” and “King Edward and the Hermit” are other specimens; and any one who will take the trouble to examine will be convinced that all these stories are one and the same thing, the personages being varied for the sake of novelty, and the name of a recent or of the reigning monarch substituted in successive ages for that of a predecessor.

Rejecting, then, as nugatory, every attempt to assign Robin Hood a definite position in history, what view shall we adopt?  Are all these traditions absolute fictions, and is he himself a pure creation of the imagination?  Might not the ballads under consideration have a basis in the exploits of a real person, living in the forests, somewhere and at some time? Or, denying individual existence to Robin Hood, and particular truth to the adventures ascribed to him, may we not regard him as the ideal of the outlaw class, a class so numerous in all the countries of Europe in the Middle Ages?  We are perfectly contented to form no opinion upon the subject; but if compelled to express one, we should say that this last supposition (which is no novelty) possessed decidedly more likelihood than any other.  Its plausibility will be confirmed by attending to the apparent signification of the name