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Rh Billaud-Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories. Robespierre's private life was always respectable: he was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a little bit of a dandy, scrupulously honest, truthful and charitable. In his habits and manner of life he was simple and laborious; he was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one who had to think much before he could come to a decision, and he worked hard all his life.

ROBILANT, CARLO FELICE NICOLIS, (1826-1888), Italian statesman and diplomat, was a native of Turin. He entered the army, and lost his left hand at Novara, where he was aide-de-camp to Charles Albert, king of Piedmont. He fought in 1859, and reached the grade of general in the Austrian campaign of 1866, after which he served on the delimitation commission. He was chief of the Military Academy, and in 1867 was made prefect of Ravenna to suppress political disorder. He was defeated at Turin in the elections for the Chamber in 1870, and was sent in 1871 as minister plenipotentiary to Vienna, where he subsequently became ambassador. He was connected with the Prussian nobility by his mother, and he married an Austrian, a daughter of Prince Edmund Clary-Aldringen. In spite of the active share he had taken in driving Austria from Italy, he was a persona grata at Vienna, and his policy was steadily directed to an alliance between the two powers. This was accomplished by the secret terms of the Triple Alliance in 1882. He was recalled to Rome in 1885 to become minister for foreign affairs in the Depretis cabinet. Robilant's independent attitude as foreign minister secured greater consideration for Italy from her allies, but he did not adapt himself to the exigencies of domestic politics, and his excessive unpopularity contributed to the downfall of the ministry on the 7th of February 1887, consequent on an adverse vote on the Massawa question. Before leaving office, he completed the negotiations for the renewal of the Triple Alliance, and for its extension to cover Anglo-Italian co-operation in the Mediterranean. In the new Depretis-Crispi administration Robilant was not included. He was sent to London as ambassador in the next year, but died two months after his arrival, on the 17th of October 1888.

ROBIN HOOD, English legendary hero. The oldest mention of Robin Hood at present known occurs in the second edition &mdash; what is called the B text &mdash; of Piers the Plowman, the date of which is about 1377. In passus v. of that poem the figure of Sloth is represented as saying &mdash;

He is next mentioned by Andrew of Wyntoun in his Original Chronicle of Scotland, written about 1420 &mdash;

next by Walter Bower in his additions of Fordun's Scotichronicon about 1450 &mdash;

Of his popularity in the latter half of the 15th and in the 16th centuries there are many signs. Just one passage must be quoted as of special importance because closely followed by R. Grafton, J. Stow and W. Camden. It is from John Mair's Historia Majoris Britanniae tam Angliae quam Scotiae, which appeared in 1521 &mdash;

In the Elizabethan era and afterwards mentions abound; see the works of Shakespeare, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Drayton, Warner, A. Munday, Camden, Stow, Braithwaite, Fuller, &amp;c.

Of the ballads themselves, Robin Hood and the Monk is possibly as old as the reign of Edward II. (see Thomas Wright's Essays on England in the Middle Ages, ii. 174); Robin Hood and the Potter and Robyn and Gandelyn are certainly not later than the 15th century. Most important of all is A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, which was first printed about 1510 (see A. W. Pollard's Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse, Westminster, 1903). This is evidently founded on older ballads; we read in The Seconde Fytte, 11. 176 and 177 &mdash;

In fact, it does for the Robin Hood cycle what a few years before Sir Thomas Malory had done for the Arthurian romances &mdash; what in the 6th century B.C. Peisistratus is said to have done for the Homeric poems.

These are the facts about him and his balladry. Of conjectures there is no end. He has been represented as the last of the Saxons &mdash; as a Saxon holding out against the Norman conquerors so late as the end of the 12th century (see Augustin Thierry's Norman Conquest, and compare Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe). J. M. Gutch maintains that he was a follower of Simon de Montfort. The Rev. Joseph Hunter associated him with the rebel earl of Lancaster of Edward II.'s time. This scholar in a brochure published in 1852 produced evidence from the exchequer accounts and the court rolls of the manor of Wakefield showing that a &ldquo;Robyn Hod&rdquo; and a &ldquo;Robertus Hood&rdquo; were living in this reign. The series of coincidences to which he points is undoubtedly striking, but had failed to convince most critics. Professor F. J. Child dismisses his inferences as &ldquo;ludicrous.&rdquo;

For our part, we are not disinclined to believe that the Robin Hood story has some historical basis, however fanciful and romantic the superstructure. We parallel it with the Arthurian story, and hold that, just as there was probably a real Arthur, however different from the hero of the trouvères, so there was a real Hood, however now enlarged and disguised by the accretions of legend. That Charlemagne and Richard I. of England became the subjects of romances does not prevent our believing in their existence; nor need Hood's mythical life deprive him of his natural one. Sloth in Langland's poem couples him, as we have seen, with Randle, earl of Chester; and no one doubts this nobleman's existence because he had &ldquo;rymes&rdquo; made about him. We believe him to have been the third Randle (see Bishop Percy's Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, i. 260). And possibly enough Hood was contemporary with that earl, who &ldquo;flourished&rdquo; in the reigns of Richard I., John and Henry III. Wyntoun and Mair, as we have seen, assign him to that period. It is impossible to believe with Hunter that he lived so late as Edward II.'s reign. This would leave no time for the growth