es, had similar apprehensions, which were then not
altogether groundless; but it may reasonably be hoped, that the race
of pedants, who wondered how a man of learning could be interested in
a bundle of old ballads, is now extinct.

Departing a little from the method and order observed by Mr Hunter in
his tract, we will endeavour not only to state in a condensed form the
remarkable conclusions at which he has arrived, but also to follow, as
accurately as his references will enable us to do so, the ingenious
processes of investigation which led to these results. The object of
the inquiry was to determine, in the first place, whether such a
person as Robin Hood ever existed; and, in the second place, to
ascertain who and what he was, and to what extent the ballads of which
he was the hero were based upon actual occurrences. What a vast amount
of uncertainty there was to clear up, may be inferred from the wide
differences of opinion among writers of the highest credit who
preceded Mr Hunter in this inquiry. The celebrated historian of the
Norman Conquest, M. Thierry, supposes Robin Hood to have been the
chief of a small body of Saxons, who, in their forest strongholds,
held out for a time against the domination of the Norman conquerors.
On this point, as confessedly on others, the French historian seems to
have derived his opinions from the suggestive scenes in Scott's
splendid romance of _Ivanhoe_. Another writer conjectures, that the
outlaws of whom Robin was the leader, may have been some of the
adherents of Simon de Montfort, whose partisans were pursued to
extremity after the fatal battle of Evesham, in the year 1264. Others,
still, have denied altogether the existence, at any period, of such a
person as Robin Hood. They make him either a mere hero of romance--the
'creation of some poetical mind;' or else, led by a similarity of
names, they discover in him merely one of the embodiments of popular
superstitions--a sylvan sprite, a Robin Goodfellow, or a Hudkin. Only
two years ago, a historical writer of no small acumen, Mr Thomas
Wright, published his opinion, that Robin Hood, in his original
character, was simply 'one amongst the personages of the early
mythology of the Teutonic people.'

But Mr Hunter could not concur in these views, or be satisfied with
the mode of reasoning by which they were maintained. In his opinion,
Robin Hood was neither a Saxon malcontent nor the hero of a poet's
romance; nor yet was he 'a g