deeply read in the
Public Records. And what do these names prove? The vulgar passion for
bestowing them is notorious and universal. We Americans are too young
to be well provided with heroes that might serve this purpose. We have
no imaginative peasantry to invent legends, no ignorant peasantry to
believe them. But we have the good fortune to possess the Devil in
common with the rest of the world; and we take it upon us to say, that
there is not a mountain district in the land, which has been opened to
summer travellers, where a "Devil's Bridge," a "Devil's Punch-bowl,"
or some object with the like designation, will not be pointed out.[21]

We have taken no notice of the later fortunes of Robin Hood in his
true and original character of a hero of romance. Towards the end of
the sixteenth century Anthony Munday attempted to revive the decaying
popularity of this king of good fellows, who had won all his honors as
a simple yeoman, by representing him in the play of "The Downfall of
Robert, Earl of Huntington" as a nobleman in disguise, outlawed by the
machinations of his steward. This pleasing and successful drama is
Robin's sole patent to that title of Earl of Huntington, in
confirmation of which Dr. Stukeley fabricated a pedigree that
transcends even the absurdities of heraldry, and some unknown forger
an epitaph beneath the skill of a Chatterton. Those who desire a full
acquaintance with the fabulous history of Robin Hood will seek it in
the well-known volumes of Ritson, or in those of his recent editor,
Gutch, who does not make up by superior discrimination for his
inferiority in other respects to that industrious antiquary.

[Footnote 1: A writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ (July, 1847,
p. 134) has cited an allusion to Robin Hood, of a date intermediate
between the passages from Wyntown and the one about to be cited from
Bower. In the year 1439, a petition was presented to Parliament
against one Piers Venables of Aston, in Derbyshire, "who having no
liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many
misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection,
wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be _Robyn
Hude and his meyne_."--_Rot. Parl._ v. 16.]

[Footnote 2: "Legendis non raro incredilibibus aliisque plusquam
anilibus neniis."--Hearne, _Scotichronicon_, p. xxix.]

[Footnote 3: In his _Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre par les
Normands_, livr. xi. Thierry was