"
"Your comparison, friar," said the stranger, "fails in this:
that your thief fights for profit, and your hero for honour.
I have fought under the banners of Richard, and if, as you phrase it,
he guts exchequers, and sacks cities, it is not to win treasure
for himself, but to furnish forth the means of his greater
and more glorious aim."
"Misconceive me not, sir knight," said the friar. "We all love
and honour King Richard, and here is a deep draught to his health:
but I would show you, that we foresters are miscalled by opprobrious names,
and that our virtues, though they follow at humble distance, are yet
truly akin to those of Coeur-de-Lion. I say not that Richard is a thief,
but I say that Robin is a hero: and for honour, did ever yet man,
miscalled thief, win greater honour than Robin? Do not all men grace
him with some honourable epithet? The most gentle thief, the most
courteous thief, the most bountiful thief, yea, and the most honest thief?
Richard is courteous, bountiful, honest, and valiant: but so also
is Robin: it is the false word that makes the unjust distinction.
They are twin-spirits, and should be friends, but that fortune hath
differently cast their lot: but their names shall descend together
to the latest days, as the flower of their age and of England:
for in the pure principles of freebootery have they excelled all men;
and to the principles of freebootery, diversely developed, belong all
the qualities to which song and story concede renown.
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