Brave Scarlet, and John, who ne’er were subdu’d, Give each his hand so bold; We’ll range through the forest of merry Sherwood, What say my hearts of gold? 12. “Robin Hood; or Sherwood forest: a comic opera. As performed at the theatre-royal in Covent-garden. By Leonard Mac Nally, esq.” 1784. 8vo. {lxxii} This otherwise insignificant performance was embellished with some fine music by Mr. Shield. It has been since reduced to, and is still frequently acted as, an after-piece. A drama on the subject of Robin Hood, under the title of The Foresters, has been long expected from the elegant author of The School for Scandal. The first act, said to have been written many years ago, is, by those who have seen or heard it, spoken of with admiration.[55] (27) —“_innumerable poems, rimes, songs and ballads._”] The original and most ancient pieces of this nature have all perished in the lapse of time, during a period of between five and six hundred years’ continuance; and all we now know of them is that such things once existed. In the Vision of Pierce Plowman, an allegorical poem, thought to have been composed soon after the year 1360, and generally ascribed to Robert Langeland, the author introduces an ignorant, idle, and drunken secular priest, the representative, no doubt, of the parochial clergy of that age, in the character of Sloth, who makes the following confession: “I cannot parfitli mi paternoster, as the preist it singeth, But I can ryms of Roben Hode, and ‘Randolf’ erl of Chester, But of our lorde or our lady I lerne nothyng at all.”[56] {lxxiii}