gas and describes its properties. An instance of his misinterpretation of an experiment may be given. He believed that flame was a material substance, and thought that he had proved this by the increase in weight of copper exposed to the flame of sulphur. Like almost every man of science in his day, he believed in the transmutation of metals, and gives a circumstantial account of the changing of silver into gold by a Dr. K—, for whose veracity he vouches. A curious letter from Sir Isaac Newton, with reference to Mr. Boyle's experiments, shows that he believed in the possibility of transmuting metals, so that Boyle was in good company.

A work on colours shows that he held correct views on that subject. He says that colours may be considered either as a quality residing in bodies to modify light after a particular manner, or else as light itself so modified as to strike upon the eye, and cause the sensation which we call colour, but that the latter is the more proper definition of what we call colour.

He made many experiments on keeping fruits, milk, beer, meat, &c., in vacuo, and although he could not prevent putrefaction, he found that it was much delayed, and was satisfied that in a sufficiently perfect vacuum it could be prevented. He thus had a foreshadowing of the preservation of meat, now carried out on so large a scale in tinned meats.

Hydrostatics were also a favourite subject with him, especially what is known as the hydrostatic paradox. He treated on it in several papers read before the Royal Society, both experimentally and theoretically.

It seems strange now that it should have been necessary to prove formally "that in water and other fluids the lower parts are pressed by the upper," and "that the cause of the ascent of fluids in a syphon can be explained without assuming that nature abhors a vacuum," and yet these

things were denied, and so experimental proofs of all kinds were given in abundance.

An ingenious experiment to prove that water has weight in water may be mentioned. A glass bulb with a narrow neck was weighted until it sank, the greater part of the air in the bulb having been expelled by heat before the neck was sealed. It was attached to a beam of a balance and balanced. The point of the tube was then broken off in the water, some water rushed in, and the bulb became heavier, weights were added to bring about equilibrium, and the water which had entered the bulb weighed. It was found that the weight of the water was the same as the increase in the weight of the bulb.

It has been made a reproach to Boyle that he was credulous. He certainly did swallow some remarkable stories, such as divers being able to remain an hour under water. He cannot quite accept Cardanus Colanum, who relates that a Sicilian diver was able to remain three or four hours under water, and feels bound to add in parenthesis (unless Cardanus errs or imposes on us). Dr. Shaw, in defending Boyle from credulity, admits that he believed in sympathetic powder, the divining rod, weapon salve, and peruvian bark!! the last of which may excuse some of the others. Boyle was so honest himself that he too readily believed others to be so also. Then he saw so many new and strange things in his researches that he cannot be blamed for not rashly denying the possibility of things for which he could not account.

Without going so far as Francesco Redi, who said that Boyle was the greatest man that ever was, and perhaps ever will be, for the discovery of natural causes, we must give a high meed of praise to a man who was modest when he had much to be proud of, who was cheerful and indefatigable in labour though weak in body, and who joined to the character of a profoundly scientific man that of a devout Christian.

125

ROBIN HOOD: A HISTORY AND A VINDICATION.

By REV. S. FLETCHER WILLIAMS,

OF BIRMINGHAM.

It is M. Augustin Thierry who, in his admirable Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands, has made the nearest approximation that any modern writer has yet done to a just view of Robin Hood's historical character and popularity. Until M. Thierry was led to examine the matter, in tracing the protracted operation of the Conquest upon the social condition of the Anglo-Saxon population, the highest estimate which the great northern Outlaw could ever obtain was that of having been "the gentlest of thieves," the most magnanimous as well as dexterous of poachers and highwaymen. Yet, surely, it should sooner have occurred to the historical investigator that some higher claim to heroic sympathy than that of the deer-stealer, however successful, or the bandit, however generous, must have been requisite to make a man for ages the Achilles of a popular Iliad, the Cid of an English romancero; and it is that something which I shall now endeavour to historically exhibit.

The Latin chroniclers of England, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, occupied almost exclusively with another class of heroes, give us little direct insight into the political and social circumstances of the celebrated outlaw chieftain. But the Scottish writers of the same period, for reasons which will hereafter appear, were disposed to entertain a greater sympathy, or at any rate much less contempt, for a popular hero of the North of England. Thus, in the great work left incomplete by John of Fordun, who, in the

latter part of the fourteenth century, laid the foundations of modern Scottish history, we find a considerable passage respecting Robin Hood- an important and a significant passage. Corroborated as it is by the oldest and longest of the metrical narratives concerning him, it appears to me to overturn altogether that historical hypothesis as to the time wherein he flourished, which has not only been favoured by romance-writers, including Scott himself, but which we find adopted by Ritson in the biographical preface to his collection of the Poems, Songs and Ballads.

In the Scotichronicon, after relating the final defeat, in the latter part of Henry the Third's reign, of the great national party of England under Simon de Montfort, and the vast number of confiscations that ensued upon the triumph of the king and the foreign courtiers, Fordun adds a sentence which I cite literally at the foot of the page,* but which may be thus translated:

"Then, from among the dispossessed and the banished, arose that most famous cut-throat Robert Hood, and Little John, with their accomplices; whom the foolish multitude are so extravagantly fond of celebrating in tragedy and comedy; and the ballads concerning whom, sung by the jesters and minstrels, delight them beyond all others."

But after thus designating the outlaw as "ille famosissimus sicarius," he qualifies the stigma by adding :-" of whom, however, some praiseworthy facts are narrated," † and, as an instance of these commendable traits, he proceeds

"Hoc in tempore de exheredatis et bannitis surrexit et caput erexit ille famosissimus sicarius Robertus Hode et Littill Johanne, cum eorum complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter in comoediis et tragœdiis prurienter festum faciunt et super ceteras romancias mimos et bardanos cantitare delectantur.” — Forduni Scotchronicon Genuinum, ed. Hearne, Oxon., 1722, 8vo., p. 774. Joannis Forduni Scotchronicon, &c., ed. Goodall, Edinb., 1759, folio, vol. ii, p. 104.

"De quo etiam quædam commendabilia recitantur, sicut patuit in hoc," &c.-Scotchronicon, ed. Hearne, p. 774; ed. Goodall, ii, 104.